We're told that Tony Blair doesn't want an election 'to a process', that he wants 'a successful election'.
Bertie Ahern is more explicit. He says that after an election he wants 'a working executive' that is stable and won't be brought down by crises and mini-crises by which he means unionists staging walk-outs if they don't get their way.
Underlying these statements is the assumption that some package can be cobbled together which will see unionists vote for an executive and a first and deputy first minister: that somehow, if the IRA carry out 'acts of completion', namely putting a huge percentage of their aged 1980s weaponry out of commission and promise to go out of business, then unionists will agree to behave themselves and share power with Sinn Féin.
And all this in the space of a few weeks?
There's more than one snag before this scenario can come to pass.
The most important one is this, and it's worth reminding yourself about. David Trimble has not been able to deliver unionist consensus for over two years. Remember all the illegal shenanigans about re-designation to get Seamus Mallon the resigned, yet non-resigned, deputy first minister not re-elected because he hadn't really resigned, but sort of beamed up again by Scotty? Why? Because Trimble hadn't the numbers to deliver.
Has anything improved since then? On the contrary, as you've read here before, even if Trimble gets more seats than the DUP he's going to have at least five assembly members who will not vote for an executive no matter what promises the IRA make or how much weaponry they decommission.
Whatever package Adams, Trimble, Ahern and Blair glue together no executive will be elected. This simple arithmetic is undeniable.
Indeed this simple sum, five Donaldsonites, is putting the best face on it. Suppose the DUP mop up all the other extreme unionist splinters who broke away from Bob McCartney's mad house party to form their own one-man bands? Suppose SF get more seats than either the divided UUP or DUP?
Now, whatever you may think of the IRA army council, no-one has accused them of being stupid. They can add up the number of likely DUP and UUP seats as accurately as anyone else and come to the same conclusion.
It's this. Since no executive can be formed, there are two options. First, the law permits a six-week negotiating period to establish an executive. Then another election must be called. During this period the required review of the agreement's workings might take place.
Unlikely, because it's hard to imagine the review being completed and an executive elected in six weeks. Furthermore, it's hard to see parties giving hostages to fortune in a review with another election pending.
A second option is more likely: another election and then a review. In these circumstances why should the IRA present all its cards to David Trimble and his lame duck party now when they might need some of the cards to play in negotiations after an election? In fact there might be two sets of negotiations in which cards would be needed.
Either way, Tony Blair's aim to avoid an election 'to a process' is completely divorced from reality, just like his hope of a 'successful election', that is, one which gives Trimble a final chance as first minister.
The fact is that running down the IRA as a military organisation is a process which is linked to the process of British demilitarisation as laid out in Annex I of the joint declaration and which will not be completed until April 2005.
The British government fully realises that the IRA can't suddenly vanish like snow off a ditch much as they would like that to do so. They know change has to be managed sensitively. In short, any election must be the beginning of these processes.
Can unionists, particularly anti-agreement unionists, swallow SF in an executive while the IRA undertakes a two-year run-down to coincide with British troop reductions and the removal of fortifications?
Not to mention all the other stuff in the joint declaration like on-the- runs and moves to devolve justice which Trimble's party is totally split on. Fat chance. Quite the opposite. It's unionists' behaviour since 1994 which has prolonged the whole process inordinately by interfering in every mechanism Dublin and London devised for independent oversight of the peace process. They'll do the same with the Monitoring Commission. The real difficulty at the heart of the current impasse is Tony Blair's fond faith that a shimmering Shangri-La will be revealed by one big stroke which will cut through all the entanglements. So his belief in a 'successful election' which will resolve everything. Some hope.
