Apprentice Robinson takes top spot

The decision will mean one of the most able politicians of his generation will finally get a chance to test his skills as Northern Ireland’s First Minister when Mr Paisley steps down before the summer.

Born in Belfast in December 1948, Peter Robinson was educated at Annadale Grammar School and Castlereagh College of Further Education in the east of the city before joining an estate agency.

However his heart was in politics and even in his teens he was writing pamphlets.

In 1973 – four years after Mr Paisley set up the DUP – Mr Robinson became a member of its executive and two years later its general secretary.

The ambitious young politician became a Castlereagh councillor in 1977 and, when Margaret Thatcher swept to power in the 1979 General Election, he captured the East Belfast seat in a thrilling battle with veteran unionist Bill Craig by a margin of just 64 votes.

Mr Robinson never faced a tight contest in the seat again, growing the majority to more than 8,000 four years later.

At the same time, he turned Castlereagh Council into a DUP stronghold – serving as Mayor twice, eventually being given the Freedom of the Borough and having a leisure facility named after him.

His wife, Iris, whom he first met at Castlereagh College, would later join him on the council in 1989, in the Assembly and in Westminster as MP for Strangford. The couple have three children – sons Jonathan and Gareth and daughter Rebekah.

In 1980 Mr Robinson became the deputy leader of the DUP.

His tough talking against the IRA at the height of the Troubles and also the Irish Government gained him reputation as a unionist hard-liner.

In 1985, after Mrs Thatcher and Garret Fitzgerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, he joined other DUP and Ulster Unionist MPs who resigned their seats in protest.

The following year he led 500 loyalists in a late-night incursion over the Irish border into the Co Monaghan village of Clontibret to show how lax security was.

He was arrested and pleaded guilty to unlawful assembly, having a £17,500 fine imposed on him in a Drogheda court. The East Belfast MP briefly resigned from the DUP deputy leadership after the episode but soon returned to the role.

As Mr Paisley’s most senior lieutenant, he continued to hone his skills in the House of Commons and various Stormont Assemblies and, after the Good Friday Agreement, was one of two DUP ministerial appointees to the Stormont Executive in 1999 led by the Ulster Unionists’ David Trimble and SDLP’s Seamus Mallon.

As Regional Development Minister, he shone at the dispatch box where he was a commanding presence with his acerbic wit and firm grasp of Parliamentary procedure.

In accordance with DUP policy, Mr Robinson and Social Development Minister Nigel Dodds boycotted Cabinet meetings.

They also made way for East Derry MP Gregory Campbell and Maurice Morrow for a year while Mr Paisley rotated his ministries among senior members before assuming office again.

Throughout, he remained a strong critic of republicanism and also Ulster Unionism, courting renegade members of the rival party opposed to Mr Trimble and the Good Friday Agreement.

Around this time he also tried to soften his public image – spiking his hair, dressing in smart suits and showing a rather flamboyant side to his character in one TV interview.

In a rare glimpse of his private life, the part-time golfer revealed his extensive collection of colourful ties and also his breeding of Japanese Koi fish in two large ponds in his back garden.

A year after the collapse of devolved government in 2002, Mr Robinson masterminded the party’s emergence as the North’s largest party in the Assembly Election.

Within months, three Ulster Unionist MLAs defected to the DUP, including Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson and Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Arlene Foster.

Their defection effectively sealed the Ulster Unionists’ fate in the 2005 General Election, with the DUP surging to nine House of Commons seats while the UUP fell from five to just one.

With electoral strength came responsibility. Mr Robinson, Mr Dodds and Ian Paisley Junior all assumed key roles in the party’s negotiating team alongside an ageing Rev Ian Paisley and tabled proposals on the return of devolution to Northern Ireland.

The East Belfast MP stood firmly alongside his leader during the breakthrough St Andrews Agreement talks in October 2006 and also last March when the party held its first face-to-face public meeting with Sinn Féin in the Stormont dining room.

When power-sharing resumed in May last year with Mr Paisley as First Minister and Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister, Mr Robinson was appointed Finance Minister, delivering a Budget and pushing the reform of the domestic rates.

Still portrayed in some satire shows as Mr Angry, he has worked hard to chisel away at that image with impressive performances at the dispatch box, notable for his droll one-liners.

However last October he clashed on the floor of the House with one Cabinet colleague, SDLP Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie, accusing her of acting improperly over her decision to axe a £1.2m (€1.5m) fund of loyalist communities.

The DUP is expecting a business-like approach to power-sharing under Mr Robinson’s leadership.

There will be no more Chuckle Brothers imagery with Mr McGuinness once he takes over as First Minister but it will not be the Brothers Grim either.