They came, they tried, they failed

THE two premiers deserved A for effort, but still walked away from the latest Northern drama with an F for failure.

Brian Cowen and Gordon Brown looked understandably deflated and tired as they retreated from Hillsborough Castle, still trying to put the best spin possible on the 45 hours they had invested there by insisting they had created an elusive-sounding “pathway to an agreement”.

Unfortunately, that pathway remains road-blocked by the strewn wreckage of the impact of the DUP and Sinn Féin political juggernauts smashing into one another along its route.

Sinn Féin felt like they were being pushed around on parades, and accused the DUP of using the issue as a ploy to cover their determination not to allow devolvement of justice power to Belfast.

DUP leader Peter Robinson was playing it tough after his little local difficulty of recent weeks and almost daring Sinn Féin to fulfil its muttered threats and pull-out of the Executive, thus plunging the North into early elections and a long season of political recriminations.

The premiers made their excuses and left, demanding SF and the DUP sort out their differences within 48 hours – or else.

Or else what? Well, Dublin and London will publish the agreement they thought they had got the DUP and Sinn Féin close to cementing in the negotiations which dragged on until 5am yesterday morning. It is hardly a threat to chill the likes of Robinson and McGuinness, more a manoeuvre to ensure the two governments get the first shot into the inevitable blame game which will now engulf and derail power-sharing.

Mr Robinson said whoever walked away from the institutions would face the wrath of the community. But, as this is the North, there is not one community that matters, but two, and he and Martin McGuinness played shamelessly to the gallery of their respective sections of this fragmented society.

Strangely, the only light moment in a tense final day came from Gerry Adams when he burst through a door to smile manically at the press corps who had been kept waiting for the prime ministers. The Sinn Féin president refused to say anything, but behind lurked McGuinness with a face that could only be described as thunderous. His demeanour said all that needed to be said about where SF were heading next.

As he slipped out of the back of the castle and into a car with the Taoiseach, Gordon Brown looked almost relieved to get away from something so tribal and intransigent to get back to London to host a major global conference on something far simpler to get to grips with – Afghanistan.

More spin than substance had emerged from Hillsborough since the premier’s dramatic rush on Monday afternoon from Downing Street to Belfast to try and make our friends in the North see sense and make what in the real world would be seen as a fairly cut and dried compromise that would see both communities take a bit of pain for a huge democratic gain.

It was all so different in Tony Blair’s day when he could trot off little sound bite gems like feeling the hand of history on his shoulder. The hand of history is still there, but now the main Stormont players seem content to direct it at each other’s throats.