Tough love is the British Prime Minister's new approach to the Northern politicians. Like a parent warning an errant teenager, "Be home by midnight or I'm locking the front door", Tony Blair has set a June 30th deadline for the parties with a threat of dire but unspecified consequences if they miss their appointment with history.
There was a definite note of exasperation as he outlined yet again the benefits and advantages of the Good Friday pact, dismissed dissident unionists for having no alternative and reiterated that after June 30th the carriage would turn into a pumpkin and the horses back into mice.
"I want people to understand that I am serious about this deadline. Either on July 1st we will move this process forward or we will have to look for another way forward," he told a group of students at Stranmillis College in Belfast.
It was a nicely managed New Labour occasion. Rows of youngsters in their blazers formed a buffer between the Prime Minister and the threatening media. He took over a dozen questions from the students but, when the journalists got him to themselves later, he answered only three.
There was only one question on the journalists' minds: what did he mean by "another way forward"? We had been told in the past that there was no Plan B and here he was talking about alternatives. The Prime Minister retreated into vague generalities. He still has not revealed what he has in mind if the parties fail to agree by the end of the month.
There are as many theories as there are participants in the peace process. Contacts in mainstream loyalism, for example, see an incipient form of joint sovereignty looming, an Anglo-Irish Agreement Mark Two where the Irish identity of the nationalists will receive recognition without any unionist influence over the process.
While most republicans welcomed the speech there were some in their ranks who felt Blair had made a mistake by referring to an alternative strategy. Give the unionists a way out and they would take it.
There is no sense at Stormont of an institution about to close down. If the Assembly is to be brought to an end and salaries cut off, this has not permeated through to the denizens of the House on the Hill just yet. If a performance-related pay scheme were introduced for Assembly members, they clearly would not fare well.
Blair covered the tired old issues and tried to breathe new life into them. He put his finger on the real problem for a significant element of unionism when he spoke of the necessity for power-sharing between the two communities.
"Many republicans do not believe that unionism will share power with them. Unionists must prove them wrong," he said. No doubt he is well aware that for some elements in unionism - not the UUP leadership, it must be said - power-sharing with "the other side" is anathema and the decommissioning issue merely provides convenient camouflage for that position.
He addressed the decommissioning issue directly but the tone was strictly post-Hillsborough. "How do we resolve it? The only way is: we must return to the Good Friday agreement." This was comforting to republicans, who have been saying all along that the issue must be dealt with under the terms agreed on Good Friday. But if he accepted that weapons disposal was "not a prior precondition of the executive", the Prime Minister made clear that all the pain was not over for Sinn Fein on this issue.
"No one will believe that a party with a close connection with a paramilitary group could not bring about decommissioning," he continued. "And if they cannot bring it about, why can they not make it clear that they believe decommissioning should happen? And condemn those who fail to bring it about?" One can easily foresee Sinn Fein saying decommissioning ought to happen, but couched in the terms of its usual mantra that "all guns must be removed from Irish politics". But when asked to condemn the IRA, Sinn Fein is more likely to borrow the Paisley slogan on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, "Never, never, never." The main private reaction to the speech in UUP circles was that there was "nothing particularly new in it". The fact that they were not alarmed by its content suggests that they, too, acknowledge the post-Hillsborough reality that there is no imminent prospect of IRA decommissioning.
The other question Tony Blair dodged yesterday was when he intended to trigger the d'Hondt mechanism for nominating ministers. There have been signs of slippage in this respect. The small print of Standing Orders has to be got right so that all parties are on board.
There is a growing sense that another protracted negotiating session looms. Instead of ministerial nominations, there is talk of a document that will be halfway between Hillsborough and the May 14th Downing Street Draft. Like the character at the start of Apocalypse Now, one can hear the low whirr of British and Irish helicopters heading towards the lawn of Stormont. None shall sleep in the nights coming up to June 30th.