First, to clarify: last week’s column didn’t advocate Sinn Féin downing tools and walking out of the Assembly immediately.

The whole expensive charade would stagger on for months with ministers still in place and deprive Sinn Féin of leverage.

No, the question in last week’s column was: “What is the use of going back into the Stormont arrangements again in 2027 when they don’t deliver on anything?”

Lying behind that was another fundamental question: “What is the point of the Stormont assembly except to perpetuate partition, which is the cause of the problem?”

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Partition is the problem, but a partition assembly does nothing to solve that problem. That’s been proven repeatedly beyond peradventure over the last hundred-odd years.

Republicans have never been enamoured of a partition assembly.

In 1974, Sinn Féin didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Republicans didn’t stand in elections because they didn’t accept this sub-polity had any legitimacy – still don’t.

It wasn’t until Bobby Sands’s election demonstrated the depth of support in the nationalist community that........

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