Should ex-First Minister David Trimble take the money and go? I mean the loot from the Nobel peace prize. There has been a strained silence from Norway where they must be wondering who misled them to double up this political blunderbus with the more worthy peacemaker John Hume?
It is clear now that a false trail was laid, for Trimble has done little for the peace process. Weeks since Trimble's disastrous visit to Chicago, unionists have been wringing their hands in pain about the damage he has done. This troubled leader of a yes-no political party has managed to anger everybody – his Chicago hosts, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, Irish America, the ecumenical movement and the decent people of this island who felt the Good Friday Agreement was the beginning of a new era.
Even his pen friends in the local media, who at first made lame excuses for his lapse, have since been appalled at the fallout of his indiscretions. They said that he had a point, but could have put it more diplomatically.
Now they are saying he should put up or shut up. Some enthusiasts are even suggesting that it's hurry up time with an assembly election still scheduled for next May and that he might consider it wise to enjoy his nice London flat permanently by joining the other latter day refugees from the Ulster scene as Lord Drumcree! Oh! Oh!
Why are they all packing it in to enjoy the creature comforts of the gilded House of Lords?
I refer to their lordships, Maginnis, Taylor and Molyneaux.
These three played a part in landing us with the present political shambles and now have got offside from the sinking ship HMS Ulster Devolution, currently reported under tow with a salvage crew aboard from across the water. Its fate is uncertain.
Will it be beached or landed in dry dock for a long haul?
Who knows, the perpetrators of this predicament have gone to ground.
They plagued Westminster for years demanding the return of home rule but when they got it they kept throwing it out of the window. Why?
Well it meant sharing power with the 'other side' – not just Sinn Féin – and teaming up with the 'Free State', where Trimble could not abide Roman Catholicism.
With not a Union flag in sight he found this a shock to the system, such a contrast to this side of the old border where they fly one on every lamppost, thousands of them!
The Stormont parliament, suspended once more, presents a farcical spectacle to the outside world now grappling with more serious matters.
Even the unionists' friends in the Fleet Street heavies find it too much.
They have been lambasting the six county state as never before. Look at the quotes for heavens sake!
One respected columnist went overboard: Stormont should be "razed to the ground", a "shrine to sectarianism. And a monument to Britain's ineptitude".
What's this? Northern Ireland's constitutions are he tells us, a "classic colonialist confection modelled on" – wait for it – "Zimbabwe"!
For good value he adds that it is "peopled by museum pieces ranting and shaking obsolete politics in the 21st century!"
If this is the vision of the wee north contemplated by the political intelligentsia in London, one wonders what the future holds.
Looks like a long hard road back to reality for a gangster-ridden community.
A weary public is fed up with trouble birds like Trimble, Paisley and the feuding clowns of loyalists and their counterparts, the lunatic green dissidents, all marching steadily backward to a flag bedecked neverneverland, solving nothing, producing nothing leaving all the urgent problems of health, welfare, transport, education and crime to the tender mercies of strangers from across the Irish Sea.
And they have the nerve to expect the electorate to send them back to try again some sunny day.
If democracies return the governments the voters deserve, do we deserve this lot?
Is it too late for sorehead unionism to reinvent itself in time for what could be a momentous election battle?
With the Portadown poltroons and their orange backers lining up with Paisley's fundamentalists (obsolete) and an ex-Tory carpetbagger, is this not the last chance to drop the LOL sectarian baggage in the dustbin of history?
