(James Kelly, Irish News)

Here's the mad month of July looming in sight with Stormont still in the hands of the colonial governors, alias Paul Murphy and his part-time Labour aides running the show in the absence of the natives who are demonstrating their unfitness to rule.

Half of them are off sunning themselves on far off beaches content to let matters rip and leave it to the tender mercies of the Brits to do what they were elected to do but got offside instead.

The rest of us are gazing with incredulity at the spectacle of the once-solid unionist establishment – with 50 years of misrule behind it – splintering to pieces.

Having failed to topple Trimble, their leader, the three rebel MPs – Donaldson, Smyth and Burnside – announced their withdrawal from the parliamentary party and refuse to accept the party whip in the House of Commons, thus challenging the party to throw them out.

There was talk that they might join up with Paisley's DUP, raising the comical possibility of the unfortunate three being whipped through the corridors of the Commons by the Ayatollah himself... but it was not to be.

They had second thoughts and claimed that they could stay within the party to fight their corner!

Having failed to do the decent thing and resign their seats and seek reelection the party was forced to send them before a disciplinary committee, Trimble at last declaring that there was no longer any room for a party within a party.

What a weird and wonderful party and what a commentary on their concept of democracy!

But it was ever thus since the days of home rule when they rebelled against an act of parliament and brought the gun into Irish politics. Donaldson put his case against the Good Friday Agreement in The Times and was kicked in the teeth in a leader.

He should have known better, for it's only a few months since that newspaper's 'thunderer-in-chief' Simon Jenkins revealed that the London intelligentsia is growing increasingly impatient with Ulster Unionist intransigence.

Stormont, recalling Jenkins's words, was peopled by "museum pieces, ranting and shaking obsolete politics in the 21st century".

Stormont, he raged, "should be razed to the ground – a shrine to sectarianism and a monument to Britain's ineptitude"!

There was no answer to this remarkable attack in Britain's leading journal and it still stands as a sharp reminder to the bigots – no doubt now penning their scripts for this year's 12th Orange extravaganza – that patience is running out in high places.

In that connection, Secretary of State Paul Murphy has assured John Hume this week in the House of Commons that the Good Friday Agreement was the only way forward backed overwhelmingly by the people of the north and south.

But to move forward, he said, there must be trust between the parties based on ensuring that there is an end to paramilitary activity.

Reading between the lines, this is precisely the object of this weekend's meetings between President Bush's special adviser Dr Richard Haass and key figures involved including Martin McGuinness, Paul Murphy, Mark Durkan and Downing Street's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.

Meantime, for the muddled Unionist 'No men' and Paisleyites intent on pulling the GFA peace process down about their ears, there is the doomsday certainty of joint Dublin and Westminster rule – that's the hot tip from a back room in Downing Street where someone is playing the bagpipes.

No dodgy dossier this time!

This article appeared first in the June 28, 2003 edition of the Irish News.

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