Mr Blair is buying time - which is precisely what the peace process needs

There are those in Northern Ireland who say that the latest crisis in the stumbling peace process has been manufactured by the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble. That would be understandable. In part, because his party's vote slips at each election, threatening the prospect that it – like the moderate nationalist SDLP – will shrink in influence, leaving the political landscape in the province polarised between the extremes of Sinn Fein and the hardline Unionists of the DUP. In part, too, because there is a real growth of dissatisfaction among the loyalist community.

It is easy to see why. There was only ever a bare majority of support for the Good Friday Agreement among Protestant voters. Over the past four years that support has been steadily eroded. The recent rise in paramilitary violence is one reason. But there is also a more generalised sense of disquiet prompted by the demographics of the province, as the Catholic population – and the nationalist vote – rises slowly but surely. With Sinn Fein's electoral advances both north and south of the border, unionists believe it is getting increasingly cocky. And the IRA's activities in Colombia and elsewhere have added anger to the dispirited Protestant perception that nationalists have got more out of the peace process than have unionists.

Mr Trimble is dealing with a community in psychological retreat, which is why, although it has no alternative to the peace process, it is consumed by a nihilist urge to scuttle it.

Yet it was never on the cards yesterday that the British government, in conducting its review of the paramilitary ceasefires, could eject Sinn Fein from the Northern Ireland executive as some Unionists wanted. That would have been the nuclear option which would have brought the peace process to an end. The announcement of more police and troops at inter-community flashpoints and the toughening of the rules governing the ceasefires was as much as could be offered.

Unionist MPs responded unhappily, despite hints that the measures brought the possibility of that nuclear option one step closer. So long as the decision to exercise that option remains in the hands of the Northern Ireland Secretary, they suspect that will never happen. It is all, they feel, an attempt by Tony Blair to buy time.

And why not? For time is what the peace process still needs. It was revealing that yesterday's measures were backed not just by Dublin but also by Washington. The Bush administration has made two things clear. It has told the IRA that, after 11 September, it is in no mood for further Colombia-style breaches of the ceasefire. But it has also communicated to David Trimble that its patience is running out with the Unionists too; they see him as "a guy who is steadily making progress and yet always whining about it". Look at the balance sheet, they say. And they are right.

It is true that in the past 12 months there have been hundreds of beatings, some kneecappings and exilings, and some deaths. This year six people have died. That is not an acceptable number, but it does not bear comparison with the mayhem that held sway before the agreement was signed, when hundreds died and the economy was crippled. Of course, pressure must be put on paramilitaries on both sides to end the criminal gangsterism that is a stain on the peace process. But the bottom line remains, better a stained peace process than none at all.