PROFILE:It's been an astonishing week for politics in the North as revelations of an affair between Iris Robinson and a teenager were swiftly followed by allegations of financial impropriety. But GERRY MORIARTYhasn't written off the North's terrifying First Lady just yet
IRIS ROBINSON can be an impressive and terrifying woman. Almost three years ago when the party was psyching itself up for the 2007 Assembly elections I spoke to her in Belfast. She was in good form, exuberant, quite funny, but terrifying.
Part of a political reporter’s duty at the end of election campaigns is to make a fist of predicting the results. You can never get them fully right because elections don’t work like that; they are unpredictable beasts, and anyway readers love to see pundits screwing up. Yet, after spending a cracking 20 minutes in her company I felt absolutely confident she would lay waste to her opponents in the Strangford constituency where she was attempting to do the unthinkable: help win four seats for the DUP in the six-seater constituency.
She did. Along with Simon Hamilton, Michelle McIlveen and Jim Shannon she was returned to Stormont. Her colleagues are decent politicians in their own right but it was the Iris factor, along with her careful vote management, that won the DUP the seats.
She achieved what her powerful husband couldn’t do in East Belfast nor the messianic Ian Paisley in North Antrim – they could only ensure three seats each for the party – nor all the other macho male vote magnets in the DUP.
And why could The Irish Timesfeel so certain in this prediction? It was the pinstripe suit, the blazing eyes, her sense of feline deadly purpose, the cool and certain ambition that could and would not be daunted, the sure knowledge that here was a woman who gave no quarter – it was all these factors saying Robinson would get what she wanted. She always got what she wanted. Up to now.
Whatever nuclear fuel drove Iris then seems also to have driven her to political and personal destruction. What’s happening in Northern Ireland over recent weeks is GUBU stuff (for younger readers: grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre and unbelievable, an acronym coined by Conor Cruise O’Brien around the drama that afflicted former taoiseach Charlie Haughey way back).
The Adams family were the first to take the limelight but the Robinsons have blown them off the stage. Drama is morphing into the most highly charged melodrama, all because of Iris Robinson. At the moment there is a real danger the whole powersharing political structure could come tumbling down. All because of Iris Robinson.
Tabloid editors on hallucinogens could hardly make it up. The allegations are as follows: Robinson, at 59, has an affair with a 19-year-old, young enough to be her grandson. She uses her friends to bankroll him in setting up the Lock Keeper’s Inn, a wonderful facility beside the lovely Lagan. Then the relationship goes sour. Perhaps the handsome Kirk McCambley wants out of the relationship. Robinson, it seems, doesn’t. She is affronted. She retaliates, stinging like a tarantula, demanding the money back, thinking she has put McCambley in his place but in fact wrecking her own life, possibly destroying her husband Peter’s political career – the jury’s still out on that – and creating a situation where the foundations of Parliament Buildings at Stormont are rocking. Terrifying, a Northern Ireland Shakespearian tragedy unfolding, with some added comedy – because of Iris Robinson.
Then in March last year she attempts suicide. On the same day Peter manages to go to Stormont and speak quite coherently at the despatch box in the chamber, even being humorous. The public face can often hide the personal torment but people are asking: was this not a public commitment over and above the call of family duty? Iris is seen on and off at Stormont, more off than on. When she appears she is inexplicably scrapping with the Ulster Unionist health minister Michael McGimpsey after he welcomes her back from illness, lambasting union representatives at a health committee meeting, getting thrown out of the Assembly by the DUP speaker when defending Peter. The eyes seem to be more blazing.
It comes to a head – or so we think – at Christmas when a halt is called to her political career. People are asking questions, rumours filter out about the affair, BBC's Spotlightprogramme has a whistleblower. It comes to another head on Wednesday when Peter, in that astonishing interview in his study, haltingly tells of the affair, his love of his wife and the hope they can patch up their marriage.
That gains sympathy but it comes to yet another head on Thursday night when the Spotlightprogramme throws more light on a dark subject. There's a financial angle as well as the sexual one: often the money rather than the sex ultimately nails politicians. For some reason Selwyn Black, one of her former advisers who sounds like a character from a Harry Potternovel, his conscience apparently disturbed by Iris's extra-political activities, dishes the dirt to Spotlight.
What next? How many heads has this Hydra? There should be sympathy for Iris, as there should be for any man or woman who is so distressed, so physically and mentally ill, laid so low, that they would attempt to end their life. And there is. But there are others, too, in this very Christian place of Northern Ireland who are unforgiving — mainly because through her career Iris has been such an unforgiving and ruthless woman herself.
On the radio talkshows the Bible is frequently quoted, some by gay callers who note that while the Old Testament suggests death for homosexual activity it does the same for adultery. (Leviticus, just in case you’re looking for the reference.) People know their bible up here. Iris’s attack on gays and the “abomination” of homosexuality and her belief that she is one of God’s anointed comes back to haunt her. People wonder is her downfall related to some form of revenge by the gay community.
Generally in politics she showed no mercy so reciprocal mercy is in short supply. Letter writer Ciaran J Breen told us this week there is an English version of the German word, schadenfreude – taking pleasure in other’s misfortune – and it’s epicaricacy. Well, that’s what Iris Robinson is suffering from.
How to explain Iris? Impossible. In a revealing interview in the Sunday Tribuneshe told of how she loved old movies and that Gone With the Windwas her favourite film. "Scarlett O'Hara is wonderful . . . what a spirit!" she said. That makes sense, there is something of Scarlett's single-minded and ruthless sense of mission, allied to magnetism and wit, in her character. The Sunday Tribunereporter is given a tour of the house, Iris blushing in the bedroom as she hides black lacy underwear lying on the bed.
You could believe her when she says she loves Peter and wants to patch up her marriage, despite her infidelity, her alleged astounding financial dealings and what often comes across overall as irrational behaviour. She has defended him against the most serious rumours, in that same Sunday Tribuneinterview rubbishing as a "malicious lie" suggestions that he had beaten her in the past. It was a British government attempt to blacken him because of his opposition to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, she said.
As well as the Scarlett/Rhett Butler image, the Robinsons are also pictured as a form of Posh and Becks or the First Couple of Northern Ireland. They live in style and grandeur; Iris always has been the best and most expensively dressed politician in the Assembly chamber. They have been married for almost 40 years, having courted each other from their teenage days in east Belfast, and through those years have illustrated great love and warmth to each other in public. She has been true to her man in her fashion.
Her challenge now is to pull her life back together again, to rescue her marriage, because both say that is what they want. The political life she mastered is dead and gone and there is a real danger that, like Thelma and Louise, she could drive Peter over the political cliff with her. But never write off terrifying Iris.
Who is she:Wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, she recently stepped down from politics
Why is she in the news:Revelations of an affair with a then 19-year-old were followed by BBC allegations of financial impropriety
Most appealing characteristic:She can be charming
Least appealing characteristic:She is unforgiving, even though she believes God has forgiven her
