DUP leader will try to motivate party with prospect of pivotal Westminster role

Politics in Northern Ireland may be in a confused mess at the moment, but ahead of this weekend's annual DUP conference First Minister Peter Robinson appears certain about one thing: "There will be no water charges."

Sitting relaxed on a leather couch in his office in Parliament Buildings, Stormont, and with his tongue firmly in cheek, he adds: “We must thank you for that interesting test case on water charges you had in the South; it’s been very useful.”

What's preoccupying Robinson at the moment are the Westminster elections next May. His ambition first is to hold on to the party's eight seats and, much more personally, for Gavin Robinson (no relation) to win back the East Belfast seat for the DUP that Naomi Long of Alliance took from Peter Robinson last time around in 2010. It'll be a mother of a battle.

This weekend he will try to motivate the party with the prospect of the DUP having a pivotal role to play should Westminster end up with a hung parliament, as is perfectly possible. He might also advert to electoral pacts with the Ulster Unionist Party.

He is in good form and seems well recovered from the internal convulsions that shocked the party back in September. That was when Lagan Valley MLA and Paisley loyalist Edwin Poots suggested it was "public knowledge" that Robinson planned to exit politics before the 2016 Assembly elections and possibly even within "months".

It was anything but public knowledge. It was viewed as revenge mischief-making of the highest order by Poots, who had just been dropped as health minister by Robinson. There was talk of a potential coup at the time but as Robinson says here dismissively: “And how did that work out?”

The answer is he is still here. However he does acknowledge that the DUP is not as monolithic as some people might have thought.

“The reality is in any political party, people come together because they have common objectives, they agree with a broad range of policies. It does not mean that everybody is in love with everybody else.”

It is also common knowledge that relations between the DUP and Sinn Féin and between Robinson and Martin McGuinness are bad at the moment. That was exacerbated by Robinson's recent refusal to support Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin for the post of Assembly speaker, as was agreed between the two parties at the start of this Assembly in 2011.

Robinson, again on the subject of internal divisions, says the speculation that a rump in the party forced him to welch on the McLaughlin deal is just wrong. It was basic politics, he contends.

As Sinn Féin walked away from a purported deal with the DUP on welfare reform, he therefore had no option but to put on hold the appointment of McLaughlin as speaker. “We made clear – Sinn Féin delivers, we deliver.”

That’s an unresolved dispute, but more generally, what about the awful sourness between the two parties?

If Northern Ireland is to have any chance of operating as a normal society, the DUP and Sinn Féin must show an example by getting on and doing the business together with at least a modicum of good will.

Robinson understands too that with demographics rapidly changing, unionists need to reach out to nationalists and, with good manners, argue the case for maintaining the union. That was implicit when, in putting Poots in his place, he spoke about people in his party with the strategic wit of lemmings.

He says: “Yes, there are people in unionism who on the one hand will say, ‘look how dysfunctional the Assembly is, why is it not able to deliver more?’ and in the next breath they will say ‘You should not be co-operating with Sinn Féin’. Now the two are contradictory. If you want to deliver then you have to work with the other parties in the Executive.”

On the talks designed to achieve a degree of harmonious politics, he says the lack of public expectation “is to be welcomed” because that “allows the parties a lot more freedom within the negotiating process”. There is no sign of a breakthrough but the negotiations are being “ramped up”, he adds.

Many issues are being negotiated but the big one is welfare reform, he is sure. “Parades, the past and flags are important but they are not the most important because they will not bring down the Assembly,” he adds, “but if we don’t get our budget and our welfare reform sorted out, there will be no Assembly.”

He will be 66 next month. So, when is quitting time?

“We need to have a smooth transition within the party, it needs to be at a time when I feel that I have accomplished some of the key goals that I have set for myself. So, when that occurs it will happen, it will not be according to the calendar.”