A swift, untheatrical end to a rising political star

Politics

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Ian Paisley Jnr cut a lonely figure as he walked into the sunshine outside Stormont Castle to announce he was leaving office.

This was not how it was meant to be.

At a stroke the anthemic "You'll Never Walk Alone" seemed consigned to history, along with one previously promising political career, at least for now.

Ian junior had not just left office, it looked as though his entire party had left him.

Of course the former Junior Minister is long used to solo runs, witness his on-the-fringe lobbying at St Andrews while the direction of the province was being worked out.

But this time it was different: solo meant alone.

It was reminiscent of the failure of BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme a few weeks back to find a single DUP Assembly member willing to go on air to defend the son of their leader and First Minister.

In retrospect, that seems to have been the beginning of the end.

It was a day of high drama at the Assembly with rumours abounding from mid-morning. But the action was moved a mile or so away, denying other parties the opportunity to look on and, well, chuckle.

In the Chamber, MLAs were left instead to debate the merits of the principle of the extension to Northern Ireland of the provision of the Energy Bill dealing with gas storage.

There was, needless to say, much more gas outside, as - even before he appeared - the waiting journalists speculated on who would be his successor.

Ian Jnr was preceded by Stormonts' most senior information officer and a few senior DUP officials who inter-mingled with the relatively few journalists summoned to watch the Junior Minister fall on his sword.

A party press officer had already informed the media that Junior would not be taking questions, a point the man himself repeated. Those will have to wait.

Uncharacteristically, though perhaps mainly due to the sharp sunlight, Paisley Jnr kept his eyes cast down for the most part of his three-minute monologue.

The tone was strident, but sad, with a sense of disbelief that events had come to this so soon.

It had been expected that Ian would dig his heels in, rather than twisting swiftly on them and becoming the first scalp of the DUP-Sinn Fein administration.