Politics here is always half a step away from the edge.
Teetering that close to an endgame at Stormont, our Government lives dangerously. It survives more than lives.
We are arriving at another of those moments.
You see it in a pattern. Stretching from 2021 into these early weeks of 2022. More turmoil in politics, that reduced the Northern Ireland Centenary to a crisis.
The headlines of now are the resignation of First Minister Paul Givan. And the continuing battle over the post- Brexit sea border.
Not just about the checks and the new paperwork of trade. But, in unionist minds, something much bigger. A fight for the Union. We are close to an election.
The headlines of now should be seen in that frame. The real crisis could come when the votes are counted.
Part of the political chatter of 2021, was the possibility of an early election in Northern Ireland. Collapse Stormont. Use the Centenary year to try to energise the unionist vote. Fight the election on those fears about the Union. Fears about a border-poll. Fears that there could be a Sinn Fein First Minister.
What if there is? What if Sinn Fein emerges as the largest party? What then?
The questions are in that frame of ‘if’. But it could happen. Some unionists have been talking about that possibility. Worrying about it. Would they, in such circumstances, nominate for deputy First Minister?
Could they cope in such a moment?
If the answer is no, then Stormont cannot function.
It needs both a First Minister and a deputy First Minister in the Executive Office.
That place on the hill overlooking Belfast could fall again. Fail again.
Would there be the same energy and enthusiasm on the part of the British and Irish Governments to begin another rescue mission?
Last time, it was then Secretary of State Julian Smith and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney who put a document on the table and dared the five Stormont parties to reject it.
That New Decade-New Approach agreement saved the politics of this place. There had been no government for three years. Now, it is broken again. In need of more attention.
“The worst I’ve seen it,” the Ulster University academic Dr Jonny Byrne commented.
On Thursday, the BBC Political Correspondent Gareth Gordon described the DUP as “a family at war”.
That has been the story of a turbulent year. Three leaders. A coup and counter-coup. The trouble in that house has not been settled. Not fully. We can read it in the statements. Hear it in interviews.
Its leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, looking to return to Stormont, he would hope as First Minister, has to manage the fallout. Manage the mood.
Not just inside his own party, but across the wider unionist/loyalist community. The party has been under pressure to take a stand at Stormont. To do something to express the anger of the unionist community.
Is it possible, it could be Stormont’s last stand?
