T here's an end of empire feel about - whether or not this past fortnight turns out to be the beginning of the end for the Rev Ian Paisley. The caveat is inspired more by experience than instinct writes Fionnuala O'Connor
Only a few years ago, the leader of the DUP and Free Presbyterianism looked and sounded increasingly decrepit. All the fault of medication, apparently: he made a stunning comeback. It seems unlikely to the point of impossibility that he can do it again.
One sign after another suggests the tipping point has passed and that having served his purpose as the charismatic figure who alone could front up a shift from intransigence to powersharing and take large numbers of unionists into a new dispensation, the colossus of Northern politics will now be shuffled off.
Harsh judgment on his son's lack of team spirit gave new resonance to the report on January 17th by Irish Times London editor Frank Millar that the DUP MPs have discussed the timing and manner of a succession. The following day's election of a comparative unknown as new moderator was another blow.
Any octogenarian's mystique is bound to be a little fragile. This one will be 82 in April. The Irish Times report quoted one of his MPs on the march of time but the march of recent days has been brutal enough.
The decline and fall of Paisleyism has several of the ingredients essential to any half-decent television series on ancient Rome. No decadence and sexual licence, obviously. But we have been treated to scenes of cruelty, an over-indulged child reduced, whiffs of jockeying for succession, and the pervasive sense of power waning in one quarter, waxing in another.
Events came helter-skelter. On January 15th the ex-DUP MEP Jim Allister released the "letter of intent" Ian Paisley jnr received on the last day of the St Andrews negotiations, telling him Tony Blair wanted officials to explore a series of requests from him for projects in his North Antrim constituency. Allister damned this as a distraction from unionist interests in crucial negotiations. Party officials described it as a solo run.
The junior Paisley blustered, then apologised. Nobody came to his defence. The Irish Times reported two days later that a majority of DUP MPs wanted the leader to go sooner rather than later, some wanting the departure to be this summer.
And the following evening Free Presbyterians replaced their founding father - the move as conveyed to him last autumn. Next day Paisley jnr volunteered on air, in a discussion initially about his St Andrews venture, that deputy leader of the party Peter Robinson was of course most likely to succeed.
Some of the father's underlings never successfully disguised their opinion of the son. Prudence no longer calls for disguise. So a leader once all-powerful saw a cossetted child isolated and attacked by curt statements and anonymous briefings. The effect was repeated - by accident but effectively nonetheless - by the sight of the father last Tuesday on Stormont's benches, magnificently sprawled but momentarily alone. Once there would have been competition to keep him company. But this was Peter Robinson's day, when the Minister for Finance and leader-presumptive triumphantly announced his first budget, agreed with Ministers from other parties against the odds.
It had the crudity of playground politics: a clash of gears as the most popular boy in the class suddenly loses status.
The DUP's most fluent Ulster-Scots speaker, Norman Shannon, lapsed into the "hamely tongue" to wind up his support for the Robinson budget, but did not trouble to translate. Ulster-Scots may be the counter to what another DUP figure dubs "leprechaun language", but is not one of the leader's enthusiasms. The Paisley focus was on the large handkerchief which he ceremoniously drew from a pocket. He removed his spectacles and dabbed one eye. In a few minutes someone would again arrive to sit beside him but for long moments he looked his age, beached in a public place under the strong lights of the television cameras.
There was always a current of unhappiness in Free Presbyterian thinking about the Moderator's political career, the sullying of the spiritual by the temporal. It was submerged by Paisley forcefulness, semi-appeased by the argument that his political purpose was to be the scourge of Popery and so defend Protestant unionism from the Romish republican onslaught. Perhaps that argument too has lost force with the passage of the years, and the passing of the Troubles.
The Big Man's clout took the feet from under potential opponents, few and unthreatening as they have been. Only one unruly meeting after St Andrews became known, when Jim Allister rattled the leader. Allister has now made life difficult again for the leader's son, and helped to diminish the father. Ego and sense of entitlement may be attributes on the way up: they lose their sheen on the way down.