Nothing that Mr Tony Blair says in the House of Commons this morning is likely to translate into immediate and dramatic effect on the streets of Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister will address the House as it rises for the summer recess. He will, according to informed sources, "raise the bar" for Sinn Féin, calling for a complete end to republican violence, stopping short of unionist demands to expel Sinn Féin from the Executive. But he has no cure-all prescription to be handed down from London which can transform the realities on the ground. Those realities have taken a marked turn for the worse during the course of the summer. North Belfast has been riven almost nightly by rioting, intimidation and co-ordinated violence. Events since the weekend have seen a further deterioration, with a spate of shootings, including the murder of Catholic teenager, Gerard Lawlor. Mr Gerry Adams has spoken of a sustained campaign of anti-Catholic violence. But it is clear that republicans' hands are not clean either.
The Prime Minister will urge support for those in the middle ground who are endeavouring to make the Belfast Agreement and its institutions work to their full potential. In reality, there is much evidence of such commitment. But both Mr Trimble's unionists and Sinn Féin remain hobbled by their own history and by the political realities around them. Mr Trimble's natural support base has dwindled as moderate unionists have become disillusioned with the Agreement. Sinn Féin takes tip-toe steps deeper and deeper into the political process but seeks simultaneously to keep on-side those elements which see the Agreement as a stepping-stone towards unity and nationalist domination.
In the past, Northern Ireland was characterised as a failure of democracy. It might be more accurate now to describe it as a half success of democracy. There are extremists among both communities. But there is also across both communities, a broad desire for normality. That desire survives, in spite of warnings of walkouts, of demands for expulsions and in spite of the threat of violence, sometimes real, always latent.
Mr Blair cannot do for the local political leadership the job which is theirs to do. He can only point the Northern Ireland parties back to the Belfast Agreement, to the undertakings they have given and to their obligations. Only those who live in Northern Ireland can create the realities at community level which will allow of peace and normality. The alternative to the Agreement is the gun, the bomb and the incendiary.
Both republicans and loyalists have been engaged in recent violence. But republicans have the privilege and responsibility of participation in government. Thus, a heavier onus rests upon them at this time. Wholehearted and complete renunication of violence, full decommissioning and participation in the new policing structures by republicans would transform the situation. It would strengthen the institutions, steady the unionist middle ground and, indeed, it would save lives. Mr Blair can achieve none of this - nor for that matter can the Taoiseach. In the end it comes back to what became John Hume's mantra; those who share common ground must decide how they will live together.