The Democratic Unionist leader, Peter Robinson, has announced his intention to step down as Northern Ireland’s first minister, paving the way for a woman to lead both unionism and the entire region for the first time.
As expected, Robinson will not seek nomination as first minister following elections to the Northern Ireland assembly in May 2016.
The favourite to succeed him is Arlene Foster, who has already been acting first minister twice over the last eight years.
Robinson said on Thursday he was not stepping down due to health reasons and said he had made his mind up before he suffered a heart attack in May.
The former East Belfast MP has been under enormous political and personal pressure for some time. He has insisted that allegations about him over an alleged £7m bribe to enable an American investment firm to buy an Irish state-owned property portfolio in Northern Ireland are false. Robinson has also endured personal humiliation after a BBC investigative programme revealed that his wife, Iris, another former DUP MP, had been having an affair with a 19-year-old man.
In a statement on Thursday, Robinson said recent achievements – including the deal two days ago that appears to have saved power-sharing government at least up until next May’s elections –convinced him that it was time to confirm the speculation about his future.
The DUP also reclaimed his old East Belfast seat at this year’s general election, which Robinson had lost in the previous election to the centrist Alliance party. “I have told the party officers that I don’t intend to fight the next assembly election for a wide range of reasons and not simply because those objectives have been achieved,” he said. “I very much take the two-term view of politics at the top.”
Robinson continued: “We won back the East Belfast seat, we got more votes than in the previous election, a larger share of the vote than the previous election, more votes than all the other unionist parties put together and we were again established as the number one party in Northern Ireland.
“After that I again went to the party officers and I indicated that I did not wish to stand in the next assembly election. The assembly was in a very delicate position at that stage and I was persuaded that I should remain to try and steady that ship to get some level of stability within the political process.”
He added: “There are a number of fairly immediate decisions that have to be taken and they will then organise a transition.
“In the meantime I don’t want people to be focusing on issues of succession yet. When the party officers declare the process – which I guess would be at the beginning of next year – then people can start looking at who the successors should be for leader and first minister. Let’s focus on the agreement and getting it bedded in.”
Fermanagh-born Arlene Foster, who is a former Ulster Unionist who defected to the DUP, is favourite to become the party’s candidate for first minister after the elections in May 2016. A survivor of an IRA bomb attack on her school bus, the qualified barrister has been widely tipped as a future leader.
Her main rival for the post – should he want it – is the Cambridge-educated North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds, who leads the DUP at Westminster. Dodds is known to prefer the cut and thrust of national politics in London and may opt to lead the DUP overall in both London and Belfast while allowing Foster to take up the first minister post in the assembly.
Foster is the current acting first minister and finance minister in the four-party power-sharing coalition at Stormont.