Come on, it was too much to expect that we could move straight from a state of conflict to a functional devolved government, wasn’t it? I mean, some of those now giving their views in the assembly chamber used to be more concerned with bullets in the gun chamber. They just need time to bed in, to get to know each other. To trust each other a little. Baby steps – that’s what the peace process is all about, after all.

What do you mean it’s been seventeen years? Seventeen? Really…? Well yes, I suppose that is quite a long time. And it’s not really the peace process any more, actually - it’s the governing process. We’ve done the whole peace thing, really. We’ve done the shaking hands and the burying the weapons and the new police. Now we’re into the part we were trying to get to all along: basically, managing a budget.

The Stormont Executive doesn’t have as many decisions to make as a national government. It doesn’t have to grapple with currency values, or the cost of borrowing, or its defence or foreign policy. Broadly speaking it doesn’t even concern itself with how to raise the money it spends. It doesn’t have to agree income tax thresholds, or policies of de-nationalisation, or VAT, or import duties. That’s for a very good reason: Northern Ireland spends more than it could raise, and if it declared itself fit to manage all that on its own, thanks very much, it would very soon go bust.

So instead the Stormont Executive gets a lump sum – more than we’re worth in financial terms - from the government in London, and all that’s left to do is share it out amongst the schools and hospitals and farmers and other domestic concerns. Benefits are paid for separately, but if we insist on a better package than the rest of the UK, the shortfall has to come out of the lump sum, in which case we have to agree amongst ourselves exactly how much to take off which department.

Because we claim to be a special case, our politicians cheekily asked for more money from London and got it. But they still can’t agree how to manage the shortfall. Some parties want to keep asking London for even more, though the answer is repeatedly no.

At this point, it’s traditional for people who wish to appear neutral to blame all the politicians equally for their failure to agree. But that is a total cop out that ignores the predicament. The UK democratic process elected a government that changed the welfare rules. Whether we like those changes or not, we can’t pretend that the 1.8 million people of Northern Ireland can dictate a policy set for 64 million people UK-wide. In a democracy you share from the same pot so you must play by the same rules. Even then, the rules have been bent beyond recognition to try to accommodate Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Greens, and they can’t bend further without snapping. These parties are pretending there is another realistic way forward when there plainly is not. They haven’t even suggested one.

There is this word you see. ‘Vulnerable’. It was used 107 times in Tuesday’s last-ditch Assembly debate. It’s a very clever word, conjuring enough imagery of Angela’s Ashes-style destitution to make questioning it seem cold-hearted. But ‘vulnerable’ people includes some households who receive over £56,000 per year. 6,600 households receive more than £30,000 per year. ‘Vulnerable’ people can also mean a single person sitting on a council house with a couple of spare bedrooms while a young working couple renting a one bedroom flat effectively subsidise a luxury they can’t afford for themselves. It further includes those whose sick note is well out of date and could do with a re-assessment. As harsh as that can be made to sound, we all know someone to whom it applies.

It doesn’t include, strangely, those who really could do with more help and would stand to get more benefits under the new system. Not ‘vulnerable’, apparently.

In any case, most of the changes aren’t even on the table anymore, because the DUP agreed to move money here and there so that no-one currently in receipt of benefits would be materially affected. Still that’s not enough, as Sinn Fein’s effective position is that the Blair-era system is so sacrosanct and infallible that it must represent a line in the sand forever, for all future claimants too.

So, what happens next for Northern Ireland’s attempts to govern itself? The SDLP have realised how powerful this word ‘vulnerable’ is and decided any nuance is pointless. For their part, Sinn Fein looks too fondly at its history not to enjoy the scent of a plastic revolution.

But this is a farce and everyone involved knows it. The money is set to run out in July, whereupon a civil servant jumps in and just cuts the top slice off all departments in a take-no-prisoners kind of way. As chaotic as it would be, you could be forgiven for giving the prospect a world-weary shrug.

The old cliché imagines that you get the politicians you deserve. In this case, we all get the hatchet-wielding civil servant that only some of us deserve, and that no one voted for.

Come on, it was too much to expect that we could move straight from a state of conflict to a functional devolved government, wasn’t it? I mean, some of those now giving their views in the assembly chamber used to be more concerned with bullets in the gun chamber. They just need time to bed in, to get to know each other. To trust each other a little. Baby steps – that’s what the peace process is all about, after all.

What do you mean it’s been seventeen years? Seventeen? Really…? Well yes, I suppose that is quite a long time. And it’s not really the peace process any more, actually - it’s the governing process. We’ve done the whole peace thing, really. We’ve done the shaking hands and the burying the weapons and the new police. Now we’re into the part we were trying to get to all along: basically, managing a budget.

The Stormont Executive doesn’t have as many decisions to make as a national government. It doesn’t have to grapple with currency values, or the cost of borrowing, or its defence or foreign policy. Broadly speaking it doesn’t even concern itself with how to raise the money it spends. It doesn’t have to agree income tax thresholds, or policies of de-nationalisation, or VAT, or import duties. That’s for a very good reason: Northern Ireland spends more than it could raise, and if it declared itself fit to manage all that on its own, thanks very much, it would very soon go bust.

So instead the Stormont Executive gets a lump sum – more than we’re worth in financial terms - from the government in London, and all that’s left to do is share it out amongst the schools and hospitals and farmers and other domestic concerns. Benefits are paid for separately, but if we insist on a better package than the rest of the UK, the shortfall has to come out of the lump sum, in which case we have to agree amongst ourselves exactly how much to take off which department.

Because we claim to be a special case, our politicians cheekily asked for more money from London and got it. But they still can’t agree how to manage the shortfall. Some parties want to keep asking London for even more, though the answer is repeatedly no.

At this point, it’s traditional for people who wish to appear neutral to blame all the politicians equally for their failure to agree. But that is a total cop out that ignores the predicament. The UK democratic process elected a government that changed the welfare rules. Whether we like those changes or not, we can’t pretend that the 1.8 million people of Northern Ireland can dictate a policy set for 64 million people UK-wide. In a democracy you share from the same pot so you must play by the same rules. Even then, the rules have been bent beyond recognition to try to accommodate Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Greens, and they can’t bend further without snapping. These parties are pretending there is another realistic way forward when there plainly is not. They haven’t even suggested one.

There is this word you see. ‘Vulnerable’. It was used 107 times in Tuesday’s last-ditch Assembly debate. It’s a very clever word, conjuring enough imagery of Angela’s Ashes-style destitution to make questioning it seem cold-hearted. But ‘vulnerable’ people includes some households who receive over £56,000 per year. 6,600 households receive more than £30,000 per year. ‘Vulnerable’ people can also mean a single person sitting on a council house with a couple of spare bedrooms while a young working couple renting a one bedroom flat effectively subsidise a luxury they can’t afford for themselves. It further includes those whose sick note is well out of date and could do with a re-assessment. As harsh as that can be made to sound, we all know someone to whom it applies.

It doesn’t include, strangely, those who really could do with more help and would stand to get more benefits under the new system. Not ‘vulnerable’, apparently.

In any case, most of the changes aren’t even on the table anymore, because the DUP agreed to move money here and there so that no-one currently in receipt of benefits would be materially affected. Still that’s not enough, as Sinn Fein’s effective position is that the Blair-era system is so sacrosanct and infallible that it must represent a line in the sand forever, for all future claimants too.

So, what happens next for Northern Ireland’s attempts to govern itself? The SDLP have realised how powerful this word ‘vulnerable’ is and decided any nuance is pointless. For their part, Sinn Fein looks too fondly at its history not to enjoy the scent of a plastic revolution.

But this is a farce and everyone involved knows it. The money is set to run out in July, whereupon a civil servant jumps in and just cuts the top slice off all departments in a take-no-prisoners kind of way. As chaotic as it would be, you could be forgiven for giving the prospect a world-weary shrug.

The old cliché imagines that you get the politicians you deserve. In this case, we all get the hatchet-wielding civil servant that only some of us deserve, and that no one voted for.