Opinion

Icy Peter Robinson leaves a thin legacy

Peter Robinson after his final conference speech as leader 
Peter Robinson after his final conference speech as leader  Peter Robinson after his final conference speech as leader 

Tireless business, news management. Sinn Féin went into action immediately to try rescuing that ‘Fresh Start’ package. The DUP cranked up cheers for their leader as he did the decent thing and said he would go.

They overdid it, just as an SF leaflet over-egged the gloss. Surely few will miss a central fact - that the SF/DUP deal surrendered benefits about which Sinn Fein made daft promises to a Conservative government whose cuts scare their own backbenchers. And a DUP terrified by an Ulster Unionism in revival mode held their tongues, though they must have noticed how gently the deal dealt with the peaceable IRA Army Council.

The two big parties still hanker after iron centralism, but peacetime relaxation in the ranks requires alertness. After bidding Robinson farewell and noting with something like sympathy that the DUP is a hard party to lead, (sounding especially human as he tends to by comparison with his outgoing job-sharer) Martin McGuinness was out next day to insist in person that the agreement concocted to allow the Peter-exit is not the shell it appears. But the flyer through the doors with a personalised McGuinness text in shiny green and yellow made the message look even cheekier.

What sparked the ‘contrived crisis’? This came in deepest green: ‘the brutal murders of two men in Belfast by criminals.’ You may recall we were told at the time that these were the work of ‘state agents.’ In two colours we got the ‘priorities’ for negotiation in the ‘Stormount House agreement’ (yep, that nationalist mangling of the old seat of unionism finally made it into print). Plus repetition for the confused. Headline: ‘Tackling criminality and the continued existence of armed groups’. Then: ‘there will be a series of initiatives to tackle the scourge of paramilitary groups.’

Direct management came from Belfast council SF leader Jim McVeigh, tweeting defiance on that promise to reduce corporation tax. Not, said McVeigh, if it cost services for the people, no way. Loyal servant of the machine that he is, the message looked less like dissent than intent to counter the appeal of People Before Profit’s West Belfast tribune Gerry Carroll. Or at least to confuse the faithful.

It needed to be a fast move. PbP guru Eamonn McCann had already delivered the verdict in Derry. ``If the Coalition in the South introduced this sort of package, Sinn Féin would be elbowing its way to the front of street protest.'' Never a man to under-use a godsend, McCann proclaimed that staying in government with the DUP had ‘taken precedence over standing by the most vulnerable.’

The man whose departure the deal makes possible meanwhile strives to the end to shape his ending, to leave a little spun sugar on his legacy. Peter Robinson would have done better to try a little tenderness now and again, the occasional response to a journalist’s question without sourness. Recourse to lawyers’ letters on the slightest pretext lost him respect from most journalists in whose organisations the letters landed. A warm smile every ten years or so? Nobody remembers one. An effort to sound softer now cannot counter decades of sneers and public iciness.

Instead, in characteristic style, he confirmed the expulsion of the one DUP voice to jib at the deal. Ruth Patterson had been expelled and he ‘believed there had been some correspondence since she was informed of the decision between her and the party’. The last t had to be crossed, even unto the last gasp in office.

All the people, especially in a divided society, cannot be fooled all of the time. The unfooled recall the darnedest things. As BBC Spotlight came thundering down the tracks in January 2010 selected reporters were summoned to be spoon-fed a version of the Iris scandal. The betrayed husband looked wretched, sure enough. But even if the ‘I forgive her’ line hadn’t misfired, the control freakery of that ‘my perfect Daddy’ card positioned just behind his head would still have lost minds and hearts.

With only weeks left, will the dagger-wielders let Peter go in peace? The cameras recorded weekend conference applause for a final speech, including the improbable assertion that it was the ‘welfare impasse’ that ‘soured relations’. Plus equally unlikely cheers for the impending coronation of Arlene Foster. The jittery SDLP handover only a week before might have been in some minds: Robinson management doctrine may have held up enough to remind the party how not to behave.

Thin enough legacy, as he deserves.