Why has this British government made such a mess of the policing issue? Is it Perfidious Albion? Is it cock-up or conspiracy? Incompetence or double-dealing?
The answer to those questions depends very much on who is asking the question. But one question will meet with a unanimous response: is the British government's handling of the policing issue good for the peace process? No.
So how did it get like this? Let's begin at the beginning.
During the negotiations which led to the Good Friday agreement there was acceptance of the need to create a new policing service. A commission was established to make recommendations on how this could be achieved. The commission, headed by former British Tory chairman Chris Patten, was made up of a range of quite conservative individuals. Hardly radical or revolutionary cadres. Notwithstanding this their report was a progressive and serious attempt to create a new beginning for policing.
While Sinn Fein's policing policy goes much further than the Patten recommendations we welcomed the positive elements of the Patten report, but we made it clear, wisely as it turned out, that we would withhold our judgment until the British government had dealt with the recommendations.
When he received the report, Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, said he was going to implement the Patten recommendations. But he seems either to have underestimated the resistance within his own system to these recommendations, or else, having given that commitment, he left it with others who did not share his view. Or maybe he has changed his mind?
We have seen all this happen with other British governments on other issues. The faceless men within the sub-committees which managed British rule in the north of Ireland for the last 30 years have lots of good reasons for resisting the advent of civic policing.
The state apparatus which co-ordinated the counterinsurgency drive of the last few decades has wielded unprecedented power on a range of judicial, military, political, economic, social and planning matters, and will not easily give up that power.
Yes, the more long-sighted insiders will know there will have to be changes. They are prepared to go along with some of these but only if an instrument of civil control is retained. In other words they want to maintain ownership of policing.
A genuinely open, depoliticised or politically neutral civic policing service would not permit this.
So, who had the first trawl through the Patten recommendations? The faceless officials who make up the Patten Action Committee and the RUC's own Change Management Team. The very people representing the very system which will have to be turned around by modernising political leaders, particularly the British PM or his Secretary of State, if the Good Friday agreement is to succeed.
And what did these officials do with the Patten recommendations? They did what they have been paid to do for years. The result? They gutted fundamental and substantive aspects of the report.
It was their recommendations that formed the basis of Peter Mandelson's statement on policing in January of this year to the British House of Commons, and the subsequent Mandelson Policing Bill. This Bill has been rejected by all shades of nationalism in Ireland, by the Catholic Church, by the Irish Government, by a range of justice and human rights organisations, by those members of the Patten Commission who have spoken on it, and by mainstream political opinion in the US.
And, of course, the Mandelson Bill did not satisfy unionism, including the UUP. And herein lies another element of the British government's implementation of the Patten recommendations.
The unionists tended to concentrate very much on the symbolic and other trappings connected to the RUC, including issues that the Patten Action Team and the Change Management Team were prepared to concede.
However, faced with an outcry from unionism, the British government sought to placate the "pro-agreement" element under the leadership of David Trimble by making concessions on the name of the RUC and other issues.
So, at Hillsborough during the negotiations leading to May 5th, while the British government gave private commitments to Sinn Fein, and repeated these in a joint public statement and letter with the Irish Government, Peter Mandelson gave a different commitment to John Taylor about the name of the RUC.
So what did the British government do then? In briefings which are reminiscent of the bad old days, it went back to blaming Sinn Fein and there was a crude PR and lobbying exercise to drive a wedge into the wider nationalist consensus that the Mandelson Policing Bill is inadequate.
This has involved letters from Peter Mandelson to US elected representatives selectively quoting the SDLP, and public statements and private briefings which accuse the SDLP of running scared of Sinn Fein.
It also involves high-level briefings by senior British officials in the US that Sinn Fein "are never going to sign up for a new policing service anyway. Sinn Fein are never going to be satisfied, and they are dictating the pace." That the "Irish Government understands this and are on board but that Fianna Fail is worried about Sinn Fein's electoral challenge". And that "we [the British] are confident that we will get Seamus Mallon back on side".
Mr Mandelson also took the unusual step last week of writing to the Leader of the Opposition in Dublin. His letter was in similar vein to the arguments he and his colleagues have been pursuing in Washington and in the media in Ireland.
At the heart of this spin is the lie that Sinn Fein will never sign up to a new policing service anyway. That is not the case. Sinn Fein wants a new policing service and will not settle for something less than this. Republicans want and need the security of a decent, democratic and accountable policing service.
Sinn Fein has produced a comprehensive policy on policing long before the Good Friday agreement. We will consider and give a fair wind to alternative policing proposals. The Patten Report, if fully implemented, may give us the opportunity to do that. The Mandelson Policing Bill does not.
We are continuing to work hard to ensure that there is a new policing service. We have produced more amendments, held more private and publicised meetings with the British government and others, on this issue, and produced more assessments as Mandelson's Bill progressed through the British parliament than anyone else.
We have done this because one logical outcome of the peace process, if it is to be successful, must be a policing service which republicans can join and encourage others to join. Currently, we have a paramilitary police force which is 100 per cent unionist.
What is required is a new civic policing service which is democratically accountable, working in partnership with all citizens, and upholding international standards of human rights. A policing service that reflects the goals set within the Good Friday agreement and which is supported by the whole community.
The British government has turned the policing issue into a political battleground. It didn't need to be like that. It doesn't need to be like that. It is still possible to secure a policing service that attracts and embraces republicans, nationalists and unionists.
This is our goal. It should also be the goal of the British government. It is their stated public objective. But to achieve this Mr Blair will have to face up to and turn around his own system. There is no other way.
Gerry Adams MP is president of Sinn Fein