IF you ever wanted to present a model of weak political leadership to study, Gavin Robinson is your exemplar.

His weekly (weakly?) email to party members is a perfect illustration: nebulous, hints about unspecified dire threats to unionism, discouraging, bleak, no strategy.

Robinson’s performance during the Drumcree crisis, which some in his party have done much to foment, has been particularly dreadful.

Instead of leading his party he has been a commentator, an observer of events, an appeaser of extremists.

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Did he ever try to dial down the temperature in Portadown, or did he copy the language and posturing of rivals in his own and other parties and none?

Michelle O’Neill was at the centre of the crisis: Robinson was missing.

Robinson allegedly ‘leads’ the biggest unionist party, yet he ceded the initiative to Jim Allister, a one-man band, who, during the crisis was regularly seen outside Belfast courts and at Stormont holding impromptu press conferences alongside, inexplicably, another one-man band, Bryson.

Unionists were left waiting to hear what Allister or Bryson would say next. No one waited to hear Robinson because he had nothing........

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