Tony Blair, Britain's embattled prime minister – looking 10 years older – interrupts the awesome diplomatic poker game with Baghdad on Monday to fly over to gloomy old Hillsborough Castle to tell the warring tribes of Ulster to wake up, "for God's sake", to the opportunities of peace in our time. The time is late, eight years late wasted walking backward to the bogs of history.
There has been talk of a deal to get the Good Friday Agreement back on track before the May election to the Stormont assembly but that seems a tall order in the Ulster political zoological gardens with so many strange animals on the loose.
Both premiers Tony and Bertie Ahern, looked reasonably confident when they met earlier to compare notes.
For once the unhappy man from Downing Street was smiling while the taoiseach – who is doing well, thank you, in spite of some gloomy prognostications about the imminent demise of the Celtic Tiger – seemed optimistic.
Tony Blair, a fundamentally decent man, has had a rotten time since that long honeymoon at number 10.
Some London tabloids have been particularly mean and nasty to both him and his family. Now they are whooping with irresponsible glee at the result of the House of Commons's free vote on war with Iraq – hysterically describing it as a 'rebellion' – by 120 Labour MPs.
One Tory commentator ventured to suggest that this might be the beginning of the end for Blair as prime minister, a stupid comment in view of the present virtual civil war in the Conservative camp.
Blair, caught up in the terrible dilemma of linking with the US president Bush in a threatening Armageddon deserves better.
Certainly no British prime minister has done more to end the political turmoil in Northern Ireland and upgrade Anglo-Irish relations as partners in the European Union. During the packed historic debate on the fearful prospect of war and all its possible consequences he found himself in the unhappy role of helping President Bush to let loose the dogs of war if the UN backs down.
He looked a lonely figure with his long-time colleague and rival Chancellor Gordon Brown sitting beside him gazing expressionless without even a nod of sympathy.
Brown is his next door neighbour in Downing Street but they say there are no real friends in politics.
A surprise breakthrough at Hillsborough would be a welcome fillip for all concerned, not least Tony Blair.
Behind all the recent polls there loomed the 'fed-up factor' and both Trimble and the other malign influence – namely Paisley and his malcontents – might get a shock at the coming election.
Senior American politicians, who came on the scene this week, did not put a tooth in it
about Trimble's failure as a Unionist leader to do other than undermine the agreement, a strange role one pointed out, for a Nobel Peace prize winner. But Trimble was not alone.
What about the Unionist grandees, Molyneaux, Taylor and Maginnis, who have now fled the scene to the comforts of the House of Lords after contributing their tuppence worth to the attempts to unravel the hard-fought agreement. The shape of things to come? Lord Trimble of Drumcree?
Finally, an irate south Down reader writes to draw my attention to a strange quote from the Daily Mail's columnist Simon Heffer, the paper proudly described as irrepressible, irascible and irreverent.
In a recent paragraph Heffer writes: "Ulster is packed with Fenian sympathisers drawing the dole and living off the backs of the very people they enjoy seeing blown up. Before handing the British public's money over to such people they should first be made to swear on oath in public to the queen."
As the term 'Fenian' is only used by loyalist bigots to describe people of the nationalist or republican tradition, comprising nearly half the population of Northern Ireland, one can only conclude that Heffer has been keeping strange company.
