`Nobody can understand what is going on here. You and I can't understand it and the watching world looks on with disbelief."
This utterly baffled comment was made earlier this week by Jane Kennedy, junior minister at the Northern Ireland Office. Of all the thousands of words written and spoken about the standoff at the Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne, these are some of the most depressing.
Ms Kennedy is responsible for security in Northern Ireland and, in the absence of the Secretary of State, appears to be the public face of the British government there. As an ugly situation threatens to spiral out of control, it is time for someone to explain to Ms Kennedy what is happening in north Belfast.
One of the first rules from the child's guide to Northern politics, dating from many years before the Belfast Agreement, is this: when the political process falters, violence moves in to fill the resulting vacuum. Things fall apart, etc.
The political process has been seen to stumble over and over again in recent months. The resignation of David Trimble as First Minister; the wrangling over paramilitary weapons and the IRA's "on again, off again" relationship with the de Chastelain commission; the failure of the UUP and Sinn Fein to endorse the new proposals for policing - all these factors have contributed to fears that the Good Friday agreement is going nowhere and that peace itself is at risk.
Some people would pose the question, "What peace?" They point to the ugly pattern of attacks on Catholic homes and businesses across the North, the flaunting displays of loyalist paramilitary strength on the Shankill Road. How would the two governments have reacted, they wonder, if the bomb planted at the Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle had exploded and resulted in carnage on a par with Omagh?
At the same time, the intimidation and punishment beatings doled out in the name of neighbourhood justice continue unabated. This is what happens when politicians back away from their responsibility to keep dialogue and negotiation alive, even in the most bleak circumstances.
In recent weeks only the SDLP, with its brave decision to support the new arrangements for policing, has shown the kind of leadership necessary to move the situation forward. David Trimble has given a grave warning that the violence at the Holy Cross primary school could spread. At the same time, the UUP leader's response to the growing crisis is to hold talks with the Rev Ian Paisley to agree a strategy on policing.
Under pressure from his own anti-agreement refuseniks, he continues to baulk at the one step which could provide a new basis for policing.
The republican movement, both wings, has problems of its own. The continuing violence against Catholics has made it much more difficult for the IRA to make any move on weapons. To do so would undermine its claim to be the sole defender of the nationalist community. It's to the considerable credit of the republican leadership that it has managed to hold the line in areas like Ardoyne, when the IRA must have been under enormous pressure to retaliate in kind against loyalist attacks.
The loyalist strategy has clearly been designed to tempt the IRA back to war, but that fact can't have made it any easier to restrain the activists at grass-roots level as yet another Catholic family has been forced out of its home.
That said, it is still depressing to listen to Martin McGuinness present such a partisan view of what has been happening in Ardoyne. He is, of course, quite right to give comfort to the parents and children at the heart of the dispute. But as Minister of Education he might have served the cause of peaceful progress better if he had used his considerable clout to persuade them to follow the advice of the school's board of governors and use the less controversial back entrance.
I understand very well the objections that would have been made by some parents - no sneaking in by the back door, etc - but such a step could have helped to defuse the situation and avoid further unnecessary trauma for the children. In this context a word of praise for the police would not have gone amiss, though that is probably too much to hope for at present.
The awful clashes outside the Holy Cross school reflect a much wider problem. David Ervine has described them as "a cry for help from the loyalist community". There is no doubt that Protestants living in areas like north Belfast feel under siege, but the lack of leadership from their own politicians is one of the factors that makes them turn to sectarian confrontation. The pity is that such tactics, not for the first time, have led to a PR disaster which will exacerbate their sense of isolation.
By far the most pressing need in Northern Ireland now is for a return to real and visible politics. The events in Ardoyne have underlined, yet again, that the only alternative to dialogue and negotiation is anarchy. Politicians in Northern Ireland have to be told, by both governments, that it is time to get back to work. Let us hope it will not take another Omagh to spur Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair into reasserting their commitment to the Good Friday agreement.