Three years ago Arlene Foster survived a motion of no confidence tabled in her just as the RHI was beginning to gather the sort of steam which would lead to the collapse of the Assembly, a disastrous election for unionism and three years without government.
Survived is an odd word to use, to be honest: overall, more MLAs opposed her than supported her, but since more unionist MLAs supported her than opposed her she was deemed to have the confidence of the house.
That's why she didn't push for a vote of no confidence in Michelle O'Neill on Tuesday. She knew that it wouldn't matter if every DUP, UUP, SDLP, Alliance, Green, TUV and Independent MLA supported a motion of no confidence (with only 27 Sinn Féin MLA backing her), O'Neill would still hang on. She also knew that she couldn't then point the finger at O'Neill because O'Neill would point back at her and remind her that she, too, had survived with minority support.
Again, that's why she supported a motion which was so top-heavy and indecipherable that most people would have fallen asleep before the Speaker's clerk had finished reading it out. That's why the UUP, SDLP and Alliance leaders supported it, too. None of them actually wants the Assembly to collapse. O'Neill doesn't want it to collapse, either: and because she knew they didn't want it to collapse she also knew they wouldn't try and force her out; which meant that she would never have to make the sort of apology they wanted her to make. Although they knew before the debate that she wasn't going to proffer the apology they wanted, anyway.
It was a case of absurdity piled upon farce, propped up with nonsense and hoisted on the shoulders of Mr Bonkers. I'm pretty sure there is a word for it; but if it's the word I'm thinking of then there is no way that the Irish News would print it. That's a pity. Sometimes we just need to holler the ugly, thumping truth of what is happening. Sometimes we need to let our MLAs realise that we aren't as stupid as they need us to be. Sometimes we have to tell them that a debate built around one of Baldrick's 'cunning plans' isn't ever acceptable, even in the parallel universe that seems to begin when you emerge on the other side of any of Stormont's revolving door entrances.
The cross-community provision applied to some votes is, like the Petition of Concern, a protection mechanism to prevent abuse of a minority by a majority. It was never intended to protect a minister - from whichever designation - of escaping censure if there was a broadly held view (and 62 out of 90 would be considered by most to be a broadly held view) that the minister had breached a number of guidelines. It was never intended to protect a minister who could simply have 'fessed up, chewed on a bit of humble pie and apologised to the majority of MLAs, along with the overwhelming number of people who had obeyed guidelines (however reluctantly), who believed she was in the wrong.
But here's the thing: if there are procedural mechanisms for protecting yourself and cocking a snook at everyone else, then why wouldn't you deploy them? I've lost count of the number of talks about talks about talks...(you get the picture) at which these procedural mechanisms could very easily be dumped, or very tightly defined and regulated, yet never are.
I've also lost count of the number of times parties have talked of the need to deal with the mechanisms, yet the mechanisms are still in place and still deployed, 22 years after the Belfast Agreement trundled through Westminster.
While I was watching Tuesday's farce (the paper still won't allow me to use the word I want to use) I wished I'd had a stiff drink in my hand. It wouldn't have made the madness disappear, but it might have made it more bearable. But the feeling I couldn't and still can't shake off is the feeling that I - along with every other person in Northern Ireland - was being played for a sucker by our politicians. Again.
It was nonsense on stilts: a lumbering freak show; insulting and pointless in equal measure. Worse, I had another feeling which is still impossible to shake off: the feeling that most of those MLAs believed the rest of us should be glad, grateful even, that they and the structures were still up and running. Hmmm.
