PETER ROBINSON has staged one of the most incredible political comebacks after facing personal and political ruin, a new television documentary to be broadcast tonight is claiming.
The programme, along with a range of political colleagues and opponents, credits him with transforming the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), bringing it in from the extremes and closer to the centre ground of Northern politics; and of being central to the stability of the Stormont institutions.
Yet the programme also looks to his more than 30 years in politics, pointing to evidence that he was involved in vigilantism in the early days of the Troubles, flirted with paramilitarism in the wake of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and differed with former DUP leader Ian Paisley over strategy.
It charts 2010, the remarkable year dominated by accusations of not reporting to the proper authorities alleged financial dealings between his wife, Iris, her young lover and two property developers.
“I still believe that the intention was to destroy me and for some, to destroy devolution,” he claims.
It says Mr Robinson is “now saying and doing things that he wouldn’t have said before” and has “stepped out of the shadow of Ian Paisley” to form his changing party more in his own image.
However, the programme also claims that despite the preparedness of Mr Robinson to lead unionism “over the top”, when he looked over his shoulder there was no one there – not even Dr Paisley who “had no stomach for confrontation”.
It was this realisation that the days of mass loyalist demonstration were finally over that propelled Mr Robinson into pragmatic politics, the programme says.
The documentary will be broadcast on BBC1 Northern Ireland at 10.35pm.