During his four decades in Northern Ireland politics, Peter Robinson was seen as a cold fish rather than a people person, a figure who unlike his long-time leader Ian Paisley did not exude passion and who, even when delivering heated rhetoric, did not strongly stir loyalist listeners. For most of his career he was utterly loyal to Paisley, sticking close to the Big Man at literally hundreds of rallies, demos and protests. As a speaker he could never equal the Paisley rhetoric - nobody could - but his skills as a backroom boy played a vital part in the DUP’s eventually successful campaign to displace the Ulster Unionists at the head of unionism. For many years he was content to work again in...
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