According to the former Ulster Unionist leader, Lord Reg Empey, the crisis-hit DUP's decision to boycott the Stormont institutions has left "Sinn Féin laughing all the way to the political bank".
It will be widely accepted that the DUP's antics are indeed providing Sinn Féin with a significant electoral boost, but the absence of our devolved administration is still causing appalling consequences for all sections of our divided society.
While Lord Empey, in an opinion article published in Saturday's Irish News, understandably offered an analysis of the continuing debacle from a unionist perspective, he would undoubtedly agree that it is ordinary people, regardless of any political affiliations, who are suffering as a direct result of the DUP's actions.
What he established with great clarity was that the DUP has taken contradictory stances throughout the protocol debate and has reached a stage where it must surely realise the enormous damage it is inflicting on its own cause.
Lord Empey pointed out that the protocol was the inevitable outcome of the Brexit disaster which the DUP enthusiastically endorsed and then equally firmly backed the appalling premiership of Boris Johnson and his introduction of what amounted to an Irish Sea border, before suddenly engaging in an u-turn of major proportions.
There was for some time a possibility that the Stormont structures, which were previously suspended for a variety of reasons, could have delivered improvements to the lives of all our citizens which might have encouraged some nationalists and many of the unaligned to at least temporarily set aside their wider aspirations.
Devolution was always crucial to defending the unionist position and it is almost beyond belief that the DUP is the group which is preventing it from making a political contribution in any sector.
The internal tensions in the DUP are now in the open and Lord Empey directly highlighted the circumstances in which Jeffrey Donaldson resigned from the Ulster Unionist Party 20 years ago because he said he could not accept the policies of his then leader, the late David Trimble, after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Lord Empey was entitled to say that, as the DUP leader for at least the time being, Mr Donaldson was approaching his own "David Trimble moment", and the outcome of these bitter struggles will tell us much about where unionism is heading.
When all that is resolved, the wider community will still feel a sense of near despair about the failure of the authorities to address the key issues over health, education, the environment and the economy which surround us all.
