Editorial: Peter Robinson portrait unveiled in Stormont marks a career of devoted public service

​A painting was unveiled to Peter Robinson at Stormont yesterday, and a bust is being planned for David Trimble at Westminster.

​We report extensively on the former event in today’s newspaper and will report more about the latter in the coming period when more is known about it.

It is a time, though, to reflect on some of the good leaders that Northern Ireland – for all the problems in the province – has been fortunate to have since 1998.

David (later Lord) Trimble was first minister of NI after the deal that was agreed that year, staying in post for more than four years until repeated misconduct and feet dragging by Sinn Fein and the republican movement led to the collapse of devolution.

Peter Robinson was first minister for almost eight years from 2016.

Both men had fraught relations. The degree of unionist unity that had prevailed in unionism after the disastrous 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement evaporated over the Belfast Agreement 13 years later. The DUP called Trimble’s form of politics ‘pushover unionism’. Ulster Unionists would later insist that the DUP not only bought into the power sharing ideal within a decade of 1998, but quietly conceded more on key points than the UUP had done.

But both David Trimble and Peter Robinson were impressive unionist leaders, with long experience of the huge challenges facing people who want to stay in the UK. Those difficulties seem all the greater today.

This is not to say that Trimble or Robinson were without flaws, but that they presided over times when an abnormal system of mandatory coalition between political irreconcilables seemed perhaps less tricky than it actually is.

They both had careers of devoted public service. Mr Robinson has since retirement written occasional columns for this newspaper, that have shown great intelligence and foresight.