(by Ed Moloney, Sunday Tribune)

These days there is little that politicians from rival Unionist parties can agree upon but John Taylor's decision last week to retire from Westminster politics and leave someone else to fight the approaching general election campaign produced unanimity in that camp on two issues.

As an act of treachery against a beleaguered David Trimble it is probably without equal in recent Northern politics, even for a man whose loyalty to his leader was about as reliable as the average British railway timetable. It was also a sure sign to veteran Taylor-watchers that the longest serving and wiliest politician in the North had concluded that he was facing a potentially humiliating defeat at the hands of Iris Robinson, wife of the DUP deputy leader, Peter Robinson and a woman he is said to hate with a passion he normally reserves for making money.

Older observers of the political scene North of the Border may notice a curious symmetry between the careers of Peter and Iris Robinson. Peter broke into Westminster politics in 1979 when he took advantage of sitting MP, Bill Craig's neglect of the seat and overconfidence to steal a seat everyone else thought was unwinnable.

Iris is bidding for the Strangford seat in circumstances that are not dissimilar. Taylor has demonstrated an almost risible inconsistency towards the Good Friday Agreement but his gravest sin locally, according to his critics, has been his neglect of the constituency and its problems. As a result he faced a unprecedented challenge in October at the selection convention from a disgruntled councillor and although he survived that the critical moment seemed to come when his close ally, local Assembly member and ward-healer, Tom Benson died before Christmas. It appears Taylor, unlike Craig, may then have read the runes, as well as the mood of the Unionist grassroots, and opted to jump before he was pushed.

At least that is what most people who know something about the politics of Strangford, a segment of north Co. Down that centres on the town of Newtownards believe. The arithmetic shows that the outcome could be finally balanced. The Assembly election of 1998 saw the UUP and DUP separated by only a couple of handfuls of first preference votes with the balance being held by former DUP stalwart and ubiquitous one-man Loyalist protester Cedric Wilson.

Should Iris Robinson triumph she and Peter would be the first Irish married couple to sit in the House of Commons at the same time and the only husband and wife team at national level politics in Ireland, North or South. Success may in fact mark the start of a Robinson political dynasty, one to match and even outlast the one created by their party leader, Ian Paisley. The Robinsons' eldest son, Jonathan (28) is a full-time researcher for his father and wants to become an elected politician as well.

While Peter has become known as the sophisticated organiser and able DUP tactician, someone who graduated from a ranting, flag-waving Loyalist to a technocratic one, Iris still revels in a more earthy type of Unionism. For instance when Sinn Féin Minister of Health Bairbre de Brun last year switched maternity services from the City hospital in largely Unionist south Belfast to the Royal Victoria on the Falls Road she accused her of "building a Catholic hospital for a Catholic people".

She rarely minces words, once denouncing the Women's Coalition at a public forum on the Shankill Road as traitors. "They are doing their best to destroy anything that smacks of unionism or Protestantism", she declared. "Thank God only 7,000 idiots voted for these women!" A UUP rival put it politely: "Let's just say that she is not nearly as sophisticated as her husband". While her style may not score points with the toffee-nosed media the Prods who live in places like Castlereagh love it.

She was born in 1949 in the Cregagh district of east Belfast, an area famous for having produced the legendary soccer player George Best. Her father, an Englishman from south London, died when she was only seven of tropical ailments he had picked up in Borneo and India during the Second World War. One of six children she often had to act as the head of the family while her mother sought work to keep bodies and souls together.

There is, in conversation with her, a gap between her childhood and the moment when she met Peter Robinson. It is almost as if what happened in between was just a preparation for marrying the man whom she obviously hero-worships. We are talking in the splendid surroundings of Castlereagh Council's spanking new £4 million headquarters where she is currently Mayor. The building didn't cost the ratepayers a penny thanks to Peter's prudent fiscal policies on the council, she points out. The rates are the lowest for 15 years, the facilities the best in the North, all thanks to Peter. Castlereagh is on the map because of Peter. The DUP may be led and inspired by Ian Paisley but it is the force it is because of Peter's political skills. And so on.

They met when she was 17 and he 19 while both were attending the local technical college. He was her first proper boyfriend and she fell for his good looks and exquisite manners. They were engaged two years later and married within three and almost immediately afterwards Peter became a full-time DUP politician. She freely confesses that she was "not politically aware at all" until they met after which she derived her political views from him.

She also got her evangelical religion thanks to Peter. She was "saved" on the night before their wedding and cites the benovelent influence of Peter's evangelical Presbyterian parents for that. As a child she had attended Sunday school organised by the Free Presbyterians and discovered that her father had been "saved" on his death bed by one of Ian Paisley's ministers. But now the Robinsons worship at the giant Metropolitan Taberbacle church run by the Elim sect in north Belfast. The fact that neither she nor Peter attend Paisley's church is entirely without significance, she claims.

At first content to be Peter's constituency secretary it was Christ, she says, who guided her into politics twelve years ago after she had prayed for help. She was first a councillor and then came the Assembly. She admits that at the beginning Peter's name helped her career but now says she is a force in her own right, the highest vote-getting woman in Northern Ireland politics.

Her spats with the Womens Coalition have become famous. She abhors feminism - "my husband is the head of the house" - but supports equality of pay, creches and so on for women in the workforce. Her detestation of Sinn Féin is equally legendary and she is proud of the fact that she has never exchanged as much as a word with any Provo Assembly member since the place opened.

Because of Sinn Féin she hates Stormont. "I hate having to go into that building and rub shoulders with people who got everything from the barrel of a gun. It's tainted." She says she fears for the future of Northern Ireland if the DUP don't win a majority of seats at the British general election. She clearly hopes to be part of that majority but what will she and the DUP do with the Good Friday Agreement if that happens? "Watch this space", she replies.

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