As ever, the SDLP tries to hold the line for political progress and moderation. The incremental deterioration in the Northern Ireland political climate will ultimately be no less poisonous to the peace process than the crisis that would follow a major outbreak of violence. Positions are hardening and key institutions set up under the Belfast Agreement are rendered inoperable. The Executive perhaps lurches once again towards suspension. John Hume and Seamus Mallon at the weekend put starkly before both republicans and unionists the necessity of moving from their entrenched positions.
Mr Blair's government is not making it easy for moderate nationalism. The Secretary of State, Mr Mandelson, responded tetchily to the reasoned criticisms offered during the week by Dr Clifford Shearman, who was a member of the Patten Commission. Dr Shearman wrote in The Guardian that the British government had "gutted" the report. Mr Mandelson remarked that "everyone has to live in the real world". But his written reply in the newspaper did not indicate any willingness to reconsider in the areas of concern identified by Dr Shearman. The Police Bill moves towards the statute book this week with the denunciations of both nationalists and unionists ringing all around it. For unionists, it goes too far. For nationalists, it fails to create the new beginning which Patten appeared to promise. Mr Mallon says the SDLP will await its final shape. He made it clear that the party desperately wants to support the new arrangements and will stretch as far as it can to do so. But there is every possibility, by retreating from Patten, that Mr Mandelson has rendered the policing question insoluble for the foreseeable future.
Mr Mandelson's approach on Patten may well have jeopardised an historic opportunity. But his decisions have to be placed in the context of republicans' intransigence on decommissioning. The IRA refuses to re-engage with General John de Chastelain's overseeing body, citing the dilution of Patten and lack of demilitarisation. There is an element of the chicken-and-egg in this but it is certain that the IRA could transform the situation if it were to honour fully and swiftly the undertakings given by its Sinn Fein counterparts at the signing of the Belfast Agreement. The republican movement still appears to believe that it can have the benefits of participating in government while its armed wing remains intact. As ever in the politics of Northern Ireland, there is brinkmanship at work. The republicans try to have it both ways; Mr Trimble tries to keep the administration in place while penalising Sinn Fein's ministers and rendering inoperative the cross-border bodies. And the suspicion endures, as Seamus Mallon put it, that even if the IRA were to re-engage with de Chastelain, unionists would ratchet up their demands and renew their threats to the institutions. Were there nothing more than political gamesmanship involved this might be endurable. But while governments and political parties squabble and manoeuvre, those who yearn for a return to violence see circumstances turn in their favour.
Dissident republicans are intent on resuming their bombing campaign and only vigilant work by the security forces has thwarted their plans. Security successes, while laudable in themselves, will create another prison problem in time. In Maghaberry, a new prison population of loyalists and republican dissidents begins to grow. And with loyalists and dissident republicans continuing their violence the object of a fully civilianised policing service remains an impossibility. There is a dangerous sense of drift, with the real possibility of the initiative passing back to the gunmen.