Donald Macintyre: One good reason why the peace process will not die

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Northern Ireland talks deadlocked as Trimble stands by threat to quit

It's unlikely that any meeting that Tony Blair has had since 7 June will have reminded him of the perils of general elections as much as the one he held in Downing Street yesterday. Surveying an impressively unaltered scene at home, Mr Blair was obliged to spend the afternoon confronting what the election meant in the one corner of the United Kingdom where it actually made a difference. It is a testament to the parochialism of Westminster politics and its coverage on this side of the Irish Sea that we are obsessed with who will lead a party that will not govern for at least four years, and according to all statistical precedent, not even then; while we neglect the far more urgent question of the leadership of a party ominously capable of changing hands in a matter of weeks, with profound consequences for the resolution of the most constant problem for the British government over the past 30 years ­ not to mention the previous century and a half.

For the British and the Irish governments, the difference the Westminster election made in Northern Ireland is almost wholly unwelcome. The sharply increased showing by the parties at the more extreme ends of Northern Ireland politics, Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's DUP, at the expense of the more moderate SDLP and Ulster Unionist Party, would have made life significantly more difficult for the peace process even if Mr Trimble had not decided, in order to prevent the UUP melting down during the election, to lodge a post-dated letter of resignation as First Minister. This would be implemented within six-weeks of 1 July if the IRA fail to take concrete steps on decommissioning.

With the IRA so far showing little sign of thinking him any longer worth saving, his prospects of remaining in office are now bleaker, on the face of it, than they have been. He can't even yet be sure of avoiding a challenge to his party leadership before that, perhaps as early as next weekend. All of which underlines the urgency of the short and intensive period of talks that began with yesterday's meeting at Downing Street with the Irish premier, Bertie Ahern, and three of the four main Northern Ireland parties.

Blithe as some of the apologists for republicanism purport to be about the prospect, Mr Trimble's departure, if it happens, threatens to take the peace process into dark and turbulent waters. Mr Trimble himself is said to be bitter that the British Government has not done more to support him. Equally, he may have to shoulder some of the blame himself. As a statesman he has a modern vision for Unionism. As a leader he has failed to modernise and unite his party, by ending, to take just one example, its sullen block of Orange Order votes.

Nevertheless, he has to his credit the historic achievement of persuading his party to do the once unthinkable and share power with republicans. It is a virtual certainty that if he is replaced as UUP leader it will be by someone who is not as sympathetic towards, much less an architect of, the Good Friday Agreement. In the very worst-case scenario, if the assembly were unable to agree on a successor to Mr Trimble as First Minister, there might have to be fresh assembly elections, with further polarisation, quite possibly making suspension of the devolved institutions a more attractive alternative, as it was in February last year. Even if, as some have speculated, Mr Trimble were to be replaced as First Minister in the first instance by his lieutenant, the pro-Agreement Sir Reg Empey, it would almost certainly be under the tight grip of his much more probable replacement as UUP leader, the notably harder-line Jeffrey Donaldson.

While a great deal less dramatic, there is just the faintest echo here of the February 1974 general election, when Northern Ireland Protestants rebelled against the embryonic power-sharing arrangements agreed at Sunningdale, sweeping the pro-agreement Unionists out of Westminster and building a platform from which to sabotage the deal ­ an event from which it took another quarter of a century to recover.

All this ­ and particularly the alarming Unionist drift away from support for the Agreement ­ would be alleviated, of course, if the IRA showed any sign of a further step on decommissioning. True, it isn't made any easier when men such as David Burnside, another (new) MP to watch on the harder edge of Ulster Unionism, announce that the IRA are planning to concrete over one of their arms dumps, but that this will be a "con-job". When considerable effort has gone into persuading the IRA to do just that, this hardly helps. But in any case talks on this issue continue to founder, firstly on policing, secondly on IRA demands for "demilitarisation" by the British Government, and thirdly on the amnesty Sinn Fein require for republicans "on the run" because they are wanted for offences committed before the Agreement came into force.

Further demilitarisation would almost certainly be achievable as a quid pro quo for some form of decommissioning. Dealing with the third would require primary legislation which might not get through the Lords. And while, on the first issue, the Government has been continually criticised for minor modifications to the Patten report, British officials complain in return that the republicans keep moving the goal posts ­ most recently by going further than Patten in demanding an end to the use of plastic baton rounds, even though recent experience at the Gothenburg summit suggests they can be preferable to the alternatives.

So that's the bad news. What's the good? Only this: a certain logic which, oddly, militates, as it has so many times in the recent past, against the doomsday view. And the logic this time is that none of the big four parties can really want the devolved institutions to collapse. Even the DUP, which carefully nuanced its election pitch to attract some of those who didn't want to see an end to the Agreement, have begun to enjoy their place in running Northern Ireland. But that applies, even more pertinently, to Sinn Fein, with two prominent ministers in the Northern Ireland executive, assuming they can see it. Its electoral gains in Northern Ireland, not to mention its success in the No campaign in the EU referendum in the South, has an important consequence. It gives Gerry Adams an impressive mandate to pursue, exclusively, the political course. It provides a telling answer to claims among the IRA base that electoralism doesn't work, strengthening his hand in facing down the militarists.

For that electoral success depends absolutely on the commitment to peace. Yesterday, in a interview with The Irish Independent, the Labour leader Ruari Quinn became the latest leading politician in the Republic to say that he would never share power in the South with a party with a private army. If, as they surely want to do, Sinn Fein wants to increase its influence in the South it will surely be throwing away its chances of doing so if it allows, through intransigence, the institutions to collapse. It would be a serious setback if Mr Trimble has to go; Houdini-like, he could even escape his fate yet again. But the stark fact is that this logic will continue to apply whether he survives or not.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk