The MLA left the High Court in Belfast £5,000 poorer this week and straight into a war of words with a future attorney general, writes Malachi O’Doherty

The MLA left the High Court in Belfast £5,000 poorer this week and straight into a war of words with a future attorney general, writes Malachi O’DohertyIan Paisley Jnr has always come across as a bit gauche and arrogant, as someone who was not likely to acquire the polish and poise of a professional politician. He enjoys mischief too much. Once, in my company, his mobile phone rang to the tune of The Sash and he buckled over laughing at my reaction.

There is a similar clowning spirit infecting many in the DUP, including Sammy Wilson and even Edwin Poots.

It is motivated by a perception that a too-ardent liberal culture holds them in contempt.

Since they are not going to apologise for what they are, the alternative is to mock.

And in Ian it expresses itself with an apparent eagerness to appal.

As when, during the Harryville protest against a Catholic congregation, he argued that the loyalists of North Antrim were “ethnically superior” to those who opposed their parades.

His case was that some anti-parade campaigners had smeared faeces on the door handles of the cars of Orangemen and that — presumably — no Orangeman would ever think of doing such a thing.

I argued with him that the implication of what he was saying was that it was the Catholicism, or Irishness, of the handle-smearers which had determined that they would behave so disgustingly.

He was unmoved and savoured his rehearsed phrase so well that he used it in a broadcast interview.

So, when he said in Hot Press that he was “repulsed” by homosexual behaviour, it seemed, against the background of his previous efforts to annoy people, that this was not an off-guard remark, but a calculated jibe.

The fact that it was ungrammatical didn't seem to bother him.

It was better that the media should be discussing his prejudices than that they should not be discussing him at all.

And, anyway, many in his electorate would agree with him and admire him for endorsing their rural values and not bending over to appear amenable and admirable to the liberal hacks.

Given that his party was going to have to endorse equality laws and that a DUP minister was to pay a grant to Gay Pride, this might even have been a counter-balance to assure the base that if it was too late to save Ulster from Sodomy, it was still legitimate to sneer.

But a handicap for Junior — he detests the media calling him Ian Og — is that he seems to blunder too often.

Why did he have to exacerbate the suspicions about his relationship with Seymour Sweeney by playing them down on the Nolan show and saying: “I know of him.” He had been in his house several times and had bought a house from him.

Nothing of the whole affair lingers like his own mismanagement of it.

Bringing a shopping list of constituency issues to the St Andrews talks may have seemed to him to be just the sort of thing other parties were doing.

The difference was that Ian Jnr was doing it without his party's knowledge.

Was he really suggesting to the governments at the table that consent to the agreement depended on funding for the North West 200?

Yet his defence is a good one; it is that he serves his constituency.

It's just a pity that he didn't use his moment of leverage to deliver something of more social relevance.

I have had personal dealings with him on issues unrelated to journalism and found him obliging and attentive.

I once had to phone him up over Christmas and expected him to tell me to get lost, but he was as civil and helpful as he could be at the time.

His carelessness with his reputation was further compounded with the revelation that he was receiving a salary from his father as a researcher while drawing a junior minister's salary.

Yet, after resigning from the Executive in February 2008, he seemed to polish his game a bit and in appearances on Hearts and Minds he scored points against Sinn Fein by exulting in his party's running rings round republicans; not a boast a minister would have made, but one that lifted their spirits anyway.

After his conviction for contempt of court this week, for withholding from the Billy Wright Inquiry the name of a prison officer informant, Ian Jnr was characteristically tactless in responding to John Larkin QC, who had represented the |inquiry.

Larkin had walloped Ian Jnr by saying that he had a lust for imprisonment comparable to Max Mosley's reported sadomasochism.

I wonder if Ian Jnr, in wincing at the bad taste, wasn't also tempted to admire a sharpness of wit such as he aspires to himself and never quite attains.

But, were he a minister, he could not have risked predicting that Larkin would regret those remarks, lest that be construed as a threat to his promised appointment as Atttorney General.

In the end Larkin and Paisley both looked like men with a similar tendency to glory in the crass jibe.

The question is whether Ian Jnr better serves the DUP as a sort of jester, appealing to the backwoods and riling the republicans, than as a minister with responsibility. He appears to be back on track to power, having been appointed chair of the Agriculture Committee.

Perhaps his gifts might be better suited to the backbenches in Westminster, but he has to wonder now if he can get there, with Jim Allister on the rise.