Ian Paisley is stepping down in much the same way as Jonah went 'down', having been made to walk the plank. Ian Paisley will tread water until mid-May when, we are told, the colossus will finally sink beneath the surface.

A party which has become expert in finessing, sequencing, spin and choreography managed to do most of the backstabbing behind closed curtains.

There are, however, stage whispers to the effect that at a recent meeting of the DUP Executive Baroness Paisley made heated comments about how her husband had been treated.

The resignation took the drama of political assassination into the final act. If the DUP's MLAs wore white togas instead of suits we would all see the bloodstains from their daggers.

The media, though, has sharpened up its skills as theatre critics and many reports chorused, like the audience at a pantomime: "'E was pushed!"

As I consider these events, I think of how two very different men might respond to these sensational developments.

Both had been the closest of friends with Paisley for over 40 years - they had all pushed the same cause.

In the declining hours of his political career they came to him separately, pleading and challenging Ian Paisley not to turn his back on all he had been presumed to stand for.

One was the Free Presbyterian minister, the Rev Ivan Foster, and the other was the renowned barrister and QC, Desmond Boal.

Their counsel was rejected - Ian Paisley would enter into a power-sharing government with his arch-enemies in Sinn Fein.

For both men's relationship with Paisley, this was a parting of the ways.

Ivan Foster has described himself as being broken-hearted. Boal vehemently denounced the path that a re-routed DUP was willing to parade down. Paisley's two lifetime friends are far from alone.

On Tuesday evening last week, my wife Anne and I were guests at a small gathering in a restaurant. Probably uniquely, there were three Professors of Politics at the table. The conversation was largely taken up with the DUP and the downfall of Ian Paisley, which was thought to be imminent.

As I had interpreted the infighting in the DUP as a dynastic clash between the ascendant Robinson clan and the weakening Paisley clan; I was required to justify my analysis.

However, what fascinated me was the acknowledgment that I had been correct in a singularly important aspect of recent politics.

I had maintained that thousands upon thousands of DUP voters had been totally misled by the DUP at the Assembly elections.

These voters did not read the runes correctly; it never entered their heads that the DUP would invite Sinn Fein into government.

My perspective was not shared by the media or informed opinion which believed, wrongly, that the bulk of DUP voters understood that their party was intent on sharing power with 'unrepentant terrorists'. The Dromore by-election convinced the political scientists that my reading of the situation was correct. Many DUP voters did not suspect that Paisley would ever say 'Yes!'.

This is the single most important feature of contemporary unionist politics - for thousands of DUP supporters, the DUP is no longer the party it once was.

To use these voters' own language, 'the DUP has let us down'. Moreover, such voters tell me that they will never trust the DUP again - or vote again.

Ian Paisley appeared this week as a tragic figure, sustained only by the dwindling reserves of his super-ego and the affection of his family.

As the spotlight fades he leaves the stage, not only because his creature, the DUP, has cynically ditched him, but because the embattled colossus has trampled his own grassroots into the ground and there are no working class, flag-waving loyalists to stand to his aid. The 'Big Man' is on his own.

For a generation Mr Paisley bestrode the province and the world as a Protestant protagonist without equal. A gifted revivalist preacher, Paisley had always relished the call to the wooden pulpit and the tin tabernacle. But, as his political career burgeoned, he had to make time for that, too.

Paisley's rise was as aggressive as it was meteoric. Stormont, Westminster, Strasbourg - from the Bannside to Brussels. There was no one like Ian Paisley, displaying charisma by the kilo.

On April 19, 1970, a 19-year-old Anne Adam stood at the back of the Martyrs' Memorial while the Rev Paisley preached on that most electrifying of Old Testament figures, Elijah.

And as that message of amazing grace rang out, Anne asked Jesus Christ into her heart and she became a Christian.

When Anne and I decided to get married we asked Ian Paisley to officiate and chose the Martyrs' Memorial for the wedding service - and the date? Well that was April 19, 1973. Yet within another three years I had been expelled from the DUP after I'd been accused of passing information to the then Secretary of State Merlyn Rees' office, and we had left the 'Free Church'.

A long process of re-evaluation began, which left us both feeling increasingly estranged from this deeply enigmatic figure.

Now, I wonder whether Ian Paisley's career was always about a grab for power at whatever the cost - fellowship, loyalty, political principle and, perhaps some years from now, the Union itself.

There was always another possibility, a road less travelled, that of the prophetic voice to a 'broken nation' gripped by binge drinking, nihilistic violence and sleazy politicians who are economical with the truth; but Ian Paisley chose to bite his own rasping tongue. After all, politics is about compromise.

Ian Paisley had the capacity for turning everything upside down. Where the founding fathers of Ulster Unionism proclaimed the necessity for unity above all else, Paisley roared out faction and division.

Finally, as his career ended, he gave the British and Irish governments what they wanted, while he clambered over the wreckage of unionism to the pinnacle of political advancement - the status of First Minister of Northern Ireland.

In his apologia on Tuesday evening Mr Paisley emphasised his achievements - no more bombing and killings, political stability, a workable Executive, brighter economic prospects, our destiny in our own hands and a peaceful future for our children.

But Ian Paisley seems a shadow of his former self, and I could not resist the unworthy thought, 'Those words were scripted for you'. That, though, is also a part of Ian Paisley's legacy - a thoroughly post-modern DUP, in which reality is concealed behind convent-like walls and everything is image and presentation.

They deploy 'optics' - while the truth tiptoes quietly away.

Having early predicted that Ian Paisley jnr would be his father's undoing, I am often asked about the future of the DUP.

This is what I say: "Ian Paisley is like a great oak tree which has dominated the political landscape for years. In the tree's shade many saplings have grown up. When the great oak falls, we will discover that the saplings remain saplings because for years they were starved of air and sunlight. The great oak tree will fall but it will never be replaced."