Prior to laser eye surgery, Peter Robinson, with his dark glasses, sharply cut suits and clipped Belfast accent, appeared to personify the hardline “no surrender” politics of the Democratic Unionist party.
Alongside the bellowing, fiery oratory of his mentor, the Rev Ian Paisley, Robinson built his political career on appearing to oppose every initiative aimed at ending the Northern Ireland Troubles and building a power-sharing government that would win the support of Protestants and Catholics alike.
He once talked about “kicking Margaret Thatcher” as an effigy of the prime minister was burned outside Belfast city hall in 1985, in front of tens of thousands of unionists angered over her decision to sign the Anglo-Irish agreement.
As unionism grew militant over that accord, which allowed Dublin a greater say on Northern Irish affairs, Robinson and Paisley briefly flirted with a new loyalist paramilitary force called Ulster Resistance, both men even wearing red berets during its formation ceremony at Belfast’s Ulster Hall.
Members of Ulster Resistance were later arrested by French intelligence trying to sell surface-to-air missile technology to agents of apartheid South Africa in return for Pretoria sending guns to loyalist groups in Northern Ireland.
Robinson, 68, has been a fixture at the top of the DUP’s high command ever since Paisley spotted the young estate agent from east Belfast as his potential deputy back in the turbulent and violent 1970s.
He won the East Belfast seat for the DUP in 1979 and held it until David Cameron came to power.
Regarded as a hardliner during the Troubles, Robinson was arrested in the Irish Republic during the 1980s for leading a mini-invasion of a village across the border, in a bid to highlight the lack of security along the frontier. When he paid a fine in Irish punts rather than spend time in an Irish jail, even more hardline loyalists dubbed him “Peter Punt” and accused him of “bottling the struggle”.
However, Robinson eventually followed Paisley into government, with their former enemies in Sinn Féin, almost a decade ago after the republican party signed up to support the police and justice system within Northern Ireland.
He has expressed his vision of a DUP that moves beyond its traditional base among evangelical Christians, especially those inside the Free Presbyterian church, and even to recruit pro-union Catholics into the party’s ranks. Unlike Paisley, Robinson never belonged to the Free Presbyterian church and over the past 15 years sought to broaden the DUP’s appeal into more secular minded, middle-class, unionist communities.
With a substantial Catholic minority preferring to remain in the UK according to successive opinion polls, Robinson has come round to the idea that moving away from the DUP’s old-style, anti-Catholic, kick-the-pope Protestant populism is essential to secure the union in the long run.
In a book last year by the University of Liverpool academic and expert on Northern Irish politics Jon Tonge, Robinson voiced his desire to expand the DUP’s membership beyond its traditional base.
“There is a distinction between our party membership base and our support base, which is much broader than the membership. As the party gets bigger, I expect the party to catch up with the support base.
“That is what happens as younger people come in. That has to be handled well, because people oppose change almost genetically and in politics things have to change. Religion doesn’t change, but politics has to change with conditions,” Robinson told him.
Yet under his leadership the party has maintained a very strong socially conservative position in the regional parliament and on several occasions have vetoed any moves in the assembly to legislate in favour of gay marriage.
He endured the very public humiliation of his wife Iris’s affair with a younger man – exposed on national television. She had a breakdown following the revelations in 2010, although the couple reunited and according to Robinson his wife “is engaged in a lot of activities and looking forward to my retirement and me spending more time at home”.
As for Paisley, there has been no reconciliation with his family before and after the DUP founder’s death. The anger of the Paisley family towards Robinson is proof that politics doesn’t always end in failure but often in rancour and internal party civil war.
Members of Paisley’s family including, his widow Eileen and eldest son Kyle – a Free Presbyterian minister – have been forthright in condemning Robinson for ousting his one-time political mentor from the office of first minister.
Eileen Paisley, who now sits in the House of Lords, accused Robinson of “verbally assassinating” her husband in the internal DUP coup d’etat of 2008 that forced Paisley to stand down as first minister.
However, Robinson will point to the fact that he has presided over a regional government that remains umbilically tied to the UK and polling shows strong support for the union in the province. He will also take heart that another Robinson – Gavin, no relation – managed to recapture his old East Belfast seat in this year’s general election.