Ian Paisley’s head

In recent days, there have been voices raised, suggesting that Ian Paisley Jr might have ambitions to replace Jeffrey Donaldson as leader of the DUP. Instead of listing reasons why this might be so, let’s go a bit mad and think instead of things he would never do.

Ian Óg would never exclude himself from the role of leader because of modesty. In his early political career, back when he was still able to feel mildly embarrassed about the way his da was going on, he wouldn’t have wished to seize the tiller and steer the good (EH?) ship DUP to golden horizons. But in his early thirties, Ian Óg and modesty had a divorce. Ever since it’s clear in every word he speaks, every glower he glowers, every lip he curls, that the Big Man’s son thinks he has political abilities at least 74 times those of Jeffrey Donaldson. So it’s not modesty is holding him back.

He would also be unlikely to exclude himself on the grounds that he eschews soft living. When you’ve had a family holiday financed by a dubious government, you know the words pamper and cosset from the inside, and you develop an abiding love of them. So you will not have  Ian Óg standing up and telling his worshipping followers that he has decided to adopt a spartan lifestyle – plain food, modest living, no luxuries of any kind. The chances of the clouds opening and his da shouting down “Good man, son!” are higher, much higher than any chance the Young One will live like a weary grass-crunching North Antrim sheep. Pass the caviar, please.

Finally, he is highly unlikely to start a sentence with “I’m not an expert on…” Ian Óg has insights into just about anything : How to ride on the coat-tail of your da, how to calculate the length of an Ice Age, how to respond to the imagined actions of gays.

Renaissance man – that’s as near as I can get  to summing up this fine,fair-minded MP:

“And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,

That one small head could carry all he knew.”

Maybe skip that ‘small’ in the quotation.