DUP leader Peter Robinson knows that even a slip in the polls would be enough to dent his standing, writes Fionnuala O'Connor
IT SHOULD be less difficult. It should be jammier than for Gordon Brown, apparently blighted, for whom each step now is treacherous. The deadlocked Northern Ireland political players who watched the zonked Brown face in Stormont on Tuesday and listened while he held them up as a lesson to the world must have thought, if only for a second, that perhaps they could stretch that little bit more to unblock the logjam.
David Trimble did the hard stuff for unionists, like weathering the release of prisoners and the transformation of the RUC. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness heaved the building-blocks of republicanism up and over the side, inch by inch. Since the same duo remains in charge of Sinn Féin, nobody knows better that the leaderships on both sides today have it easy by comparison. Yet much chanting of yah boo sucks and painting into corners made a wet summer into an arid political desert.
There was always going to be regression after the Chuckling season, since DUP and republican grassroots alike lost taste for the spectacle not long after it began. In Ardoyne and Carrickmore, people might have accepted that synchronised smiles were part of the deal, but they soon started grating. Martin McGuinness might not have minded the older Ian Paisley dubbing him "the deputy" and posing as prime minister, but the republican faithful flinched. The DUP, having had no notion it was coming, found it tougher to tolerate the constant vision of the Reverend Ian side by side with that man McGuinness, the two of them aglow with mirth. The Paisley afterglow faded with brutal rapidity. Watching the aged bent head in the Assembly chamber as Brown spoke, the Paisley dominance seemed far in the past.
For Sinn Féin, the summer stalemate was a breathing space, marred only by splinter republican violence. Months of being poked in the eye by the DUP's jeering and sneering brigade over the Irish tongue and education played badly in what republicans call "the base", among supporters who have bitten tongues and swallowed hard. Every patronising reminder from a DUP front-runner that theirs is the largest party and sees no need to consider nationalist sensitivities makes it harder to sustain the illusion of Stormont as transition to a united Ireland - which ever more clearly has no resonance in the South, and little enough any longer in republican heartlands. Retaliation took the form of repeated lectures from Adams on the failings of others and the superiority of republicans. When words clearly lack impact, he dresses to impress. So the dark-suited gathering round the table of all six party leaders with Brown and Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward was enlivened by the bright jacket of Progressive Unionist Dawn Purvis, and two men in their shirtsleeves: Woodward, and Adams - as always going one better in the informality stakes by resolute, revolutionary tielessness.
Peter Robinson's instincts may have told him the new deal needed constructive work by both parties. His antennae told him how happy several of his colleagues would be to trot into his office in their best suits and offer him the (very small and watered) glass of whiskey and pearl-handled revolver - supposing the party ever took a serious hit from that unlikely leader of men and tireless talker-down of agreement, Jim Allister. Robinson has known from the start - none better - that even a slip in the polls would be enough to dent his standing. His years at the Paisley elbow may have bred all kinds of psychological complexities but they also taught a harsh and simple truth: the big man could get away with things that the smaller cannot even contemplate. The long-time deputy needed the Paisley signature on the deal. The question is whether he is capable of maintaining it on his own. From the moment the Enniskillen byelection date was fixed for yesterday, September 17th, the idea of flexibility in advance of today's deadline for an Executive meeting became fraught.
In the wake of the prime minister's brusque assertion that the IRA army council is redundant and his public injunction to them to fix a date for devolving policing and justice, some DUP people apparently grumbled off-stage about Gordon Brown's lack of charisma. They meant he had neglected the old Blair balancing rule, a simultaneous task or smack for Sinn Féin. It would have been interesting to see Robinson's face as his colleagues bemoaned the "charisma" deficit of someone else.
But the leaderships of Sinn Féin and the DUP have more in common than they like to admit. Both know these will not be the last set of problem issues they face, and that the outside agencies who sponsored them this far are now fatigued and distracted.
Point-scoring might satisfy some, but leadership means taking opinion forward, not running scared of it.