Hope and hysteria, seasoned with spoof and spin, have become the chosen menu provided for the world media circus assembled in the tent at Castle Buildings, Stormont. Reason and common-sense have been abandoned as TV interviewers, with humiliating deference, hang on to the ambiguous utterings of former terrorists, posturing as democrats, in three-piece suits.
Peace, like spring, is bursting out all over, and the past, for a time, is being consigned to the Orwellian memory hole.
The price to be paid will only be reckoned when the music stops and the Captains and the Kings depart, and the media fly away to light upon some other carrion in some other place.
Although the 67-page draft agreement has yet to be ratified and published, its core principles are already emerging. The Ulster Unionists appear to have conceded a North/ South body, free standing, with executive powers. Nationalists have, seemingly, accepted a Northern Ireland Assembly with an executive committee of departmental heads, apportioned on the basis of party strength. The assembly will have 108 members, elected by PR, based on six from each of the 18 constituencies. The expanded membership reflects the necessity of including the minority parties, not only as a reward for their helpful contribution in brokering the agreement but also to weaken and divide the strength of any unionist bloc.
This, plus the required system of checks and balances, and weighted majorities necessary to obtain consensus, will ensure that the assembly is the paralysed and ineffective thing Ulster Unionists once described it.
However, even this neutered assembly is to be placed on political probation. Its initial lifespan is said to be a provisional six months, during which it will have to agree the terms and conditions upon which the executive bodies that are to implement the decisions of the North/South council will operate. Unionists can only have their assembly if they agree to all-Ireland institutions with executive functions. Sinn Fein has made it clear that it will not accept any veto of a Northern Ireland Assembly over such bodies; as a result, the strategy is clearly one of letting the members enjoy, for a time, the fruits of remunerated office and to sap their willingness to abandon such benefits on any point of constitutional principle.
THE task for Don Quixote Trimble and Sancho Panza Taylor is to sell this package, initially to the Ulster Unionist Executive Committee and then to the full Ulster Unionist Council on April 18th. The most the leadership can do, in the meantime, is to agree to recommend the settlement rather than to presently agree it. The Ulster Unionist Council endorsement of such an agreement is far from certain. Trimble, as was the case on decommissioning, has repeatedly stated his opposition to North/South bodies which were not subject to control by the Northern Ireland Assembly, a position which he would now have to resile from. Moreover, the prospect of sharing power in government with Gerry Adams is anathema to grassroots unionists.
Acceptance of such an arrangement would, almost certainly, cause a party split of major proportions. Indeed, in any assembly election, the Trimblite unionists could end up forming a minority rump with dire consequences for the leader's personal ambitions. It would also mean that no consensus would ever be obtained for the all-Ireland institutions, resulting in the collapse of the entire edifice.
The Sinn Fein leadership may also face grave, but not insuperable, difficulties in getting IRA endorsement for such an arrangement. Doubtless, its politically astute leadership will stress the transitional nature of any current agreement and will argue forcefully that prisoner releases within two years, the demoralisation and the destruction of the RUC, and the dismantling of the security arrangements, will provide the necessary platform for turning the transitional phase into journey's end.
The provisional nature of the Northern Ireland Assembly making its existence dependent upon the unionist concession of all-Ireland executive bodies will also be used to persuade the more aggressive IRA elements that nothing is to be lost by exploiting the political phase for a further six months. During that period, nothing will be decommissioned, and active service by "unsanctioned and wicked" republican terrorists will be used to accelerate unionist agreement in the cause of peace.
What is abundantly clear at present is that some form of agreement, no matter how complex, impermanent and flawed, was necessary for the personal and political reputations of many of those involved. What is equally certain is that there is, in cold reality, little prospect of any such agreement bringing an early end to violence. Both the Secretary of State and Senator Mitchell have openly acknowledged that violence will continue, while both common sense and historical experience demonstrates that those without any effective political mandate, who have once used violence successfully, will continue to use it until their ultimate political objectives are achieved.
The 67-page agreement of 1998 may be more substantial in length than Mr Chamberlain's infamous "piece of paper", but one suspects it will be equally worthless, in political terms, in bringing about "peace in our time".
Robert McCartney QC, MP, is leader of the UK Unionist Party