The arc of the 44-year political career of Peter Robinson spanned the Northern Troubles at their worst to the bedding in of the peace process in a devolved administration under his leadership. In his personal journey, the First Minister and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), of which he was a founding member in 1971, travelled, like the North itself, the long road from street activism with quasi-paramilitary connections, to architect of the Fresh Start deal, the latest articulation of powersharing with unionism's deadliest rivals, Sinn Féin.
In announcing his retirement yesterday, Robinson said he would step down around the turn of the year, expressing the forlorn hope that the succession race will not start until then. He will hope too that the new deal is bedded down by then and that some stability is restored to the North's fractious politics. This would be a not-inconsiderable political legacy for a man who spent 28 years in the shadow of the Rev Ian Paisley as his deputy.
If Paisley was the man who brought mainstream unionism from street politics and irredentism to the politics of reconciliation and powersharing, it would be Peter Robinson who contributed most to persuading him down that road , and who cemented the transition.
And then the “traitor” Robinson – in Paisley eyes – who nudged the Big Man to go. But, just as dissident republicanism has been pushed to the fringes of nationalist politics, so too have the politics of extreme loyalism in unionist life, largely through Robinson’s careful steering of the DUP, though sometimes accused of pandering to it.
In a tribute in the Irish News, however, columnist Newton Emerson insists that Robinson, who never joined either the Orange Order or the Free Presbyterian Church, "does not have a sectarian bone in his body"... "his long record is devoid of the hateful anti-Catholic statements that can be cited against so many of his colleagues".
His career to its very end has, however, been a bumpy road – Robinson has always been surrounded by controversy, often, but not always, of his own making. Sometimes, like in his ambiguous courting of Ulster Resistance or his "invasion" of Clontibret, clearly carried away by the mood around him and determined not to be outflanked, his vaulting ambition prevailed.
At other times personal greed – or poor judgment – appeared to have got the better of him as he and his family gathered up multiple political salaries, while recently he has been forced to deny unsubstantiated allegations he was due to benefit from Nama sales. The DUP has been recently surrounded by the whiff of financial impropriety.
Unionism is losing from its front rank a tough-minded key strategist, a realist and a pragmatist; someone, however, that nationalists and the two governments can deal with. He will be difficult to replace.