Two days later, McGuinness phoned Foster to ask her to step aside as first minister while the scandal was investigated. Foster, not known for her malleability, refused and McGuinness then made his request public. By that point, it would be a sign of weakness to step aside to satisfy Sinn Féin. Three weeks later McGuinness would resign, ejecting Foster from office and triggering an election followed by which Northern Ireland’s two dominant parties have not been able to agree to govern.
The following night, Bell returned to Nolan’s home. This time the BBC man was joined by three of his senior backroom team. Showing remarkable trust in the journalists, at Bell’s own suggestion he handed over the password for his personal email account, which he had used for government business, and gave them permission to search through it for any relevant material.
Robinson sounded cautious in what he said, with Bell driving the conversation. Nevertheless, the involvement of Robinson – just a year after he had stepped down as DUP leader – added a new layer of intrigue to what was unfolding. During the half-hour meeting, a deal was struck, with Bell giving his word that if the Nolan Show revealed parts of the story the following morning on BBC Radio Ulster, then he would do a television interview.
Robinson had trusted Cleland with a sensitive Stormont appointment, putting him on the board of the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation, a body with responsibility for developing the economically significant and potentially lucrative site of the former Maze Prison, but whose work was riven with political arguments.
The agent of righteousness then admonished the civil servant: “We’ve got to be very careful what our motivations are here . . . and we’re not going to allow any motivation which is a wrong motivation, because God will not bless that.”But what was their real motivation? The proximity of both men to Robinson and the former first minister’s discussion with Bell about his tell-all interview in this period led to speculation within the DUP as to whether Bell was acting as part of some wider plan.
One Stormont source who observed the DUP at the closest of quarters over more than a decade said: “Peter could ask Johnny to murder someone and he’d do it.” That metaphor could not have been used for many of the others around Robinson. He had always been feared and respected within the DUP rather than loved.
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