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The continuing failure of Northern Ireland’s politicians to horse-trade to mutual advantage and find solutions to sticky problems shows that politics as normal has yet to arrive in the province.

It is too easy to press the panic button which brings the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland swooping through Ulster’s grey skies like comic book heroes.

Both the unionist DUP and Sinn Fein know sensible compromises cannot bring the cash and concessions that a carefully crafted crisis can deliver. The late night stand-offs which have defined recent Northern Ireland politics do not take place because leaders lack political skills but because they are masters of the dark arts.

The agreements stitched together while under the influence of the strongest coffee and the coldest pizza are works of postmodern ingenuity which each camp can interpret in diametrically opposite ways. This leads to almighty rows when time passes and guns have not been decommissioned or policing and justice powers are not transferred.

However, the situation is eminently preferable to the diet of true tragedy which defined the province throughout the Troubles. Furthermore, decommissioning has taken place, which is an extraordinary achievement. And if dissident militants can be contained, it seems likely that the devolution of justice will eventually happen.

Once this issue is resolved, it will be harder to engineer crises. If Sinn Fein hands leadership to a generation that has not handled weapons, the spectre of the balaclava era could be removed from Stormont.

Then, a post-Paisley Unionist tribe may look across the debating chamber at nationalists and each group might at last realise they are responsible for a quite unique European nation.

Today, very few people call themselves Northern Irish. Instead, each side has defined themselves by their allegiance to another power. Unionists have looked to the British Crown with pride. Nationalists have traditionally seen Dublin as their natural capital.

But as Sinn Fein’s catastrophic attempts to make inroads in Southern Irish politics demonstrates, the Republic is a distinct country which does not see these men and women as the architects of a future utopia.

Similarly, with Scotland racing towards a degree of devolution which could lead to full-scale independence, unionists need to re-think how they will relate to the United Kingdom. An increasingly multicultural England seems to have little desire to ensure that the people of Ulster remain under a British flag.

Northern Ireland’s leaders will have to recognise that for the foreseeable future their state is defined by its diversity and they have no other home to call their own.

Originally, a Thursday column.