Did son’s ‘sleaze’ row force Ian Paisley out?

The sudden decision by the veteran Protestant politician Ian Paisley to step down as Northern Ireland's first minister and leader of the Democratic Unionists, the party he founded in 1970, has political commentators asking the question: why now?

Although at 81 his age might be considered reason enough, many feel his decision is a direct result of his son and right-hand man, Ian Paisley Jr, being forced to resign as a junior minister last month over sleaze allegations. Paisley had been accused of lobbying Downing Street on behalf of a property developer who was a DUP member.

Paisley Sr's position was also weakened by the DUP's first electoral setback in a decade, when the party lost a St Valentine's Day by-election for a vacant seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. It showed there are still Unionists uneasy at Paisley's historic decision to share power with the Republican party Sinn Fein - and at Paisley's seemingly chummy relationship with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuiness, the former IRA chief-of-staff. Once arch-enemies, the pair have been nicknamed 'the Chuckle Brothers' for their constant joshing in public.

However, while Paisley claimed that his son had been "wrongly accused", he said it had nothing to do with his decision. He said he wanted to step down following an international investment conference scheduled for this May in Belfast. "I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going come after the conference," Paisley said. "I thought that it is a marker, and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out."

Paisley refused to back any contender in the contest to succeed him as party leader: "This is not the Church of Rome, I have no right to say who will succeed me." Paisley is famous for his outspoken views on Roman Catholicism. In 1988, when Pope John Paul II delivered a speech to the European Parliament, Paisley shouted: "I denounce you as the Anti-Christ!" before being ejected from the auditorium by fellow MEPs.