You might not think so, but the RHI inquiry is a sideshow. Yes, an extremely enjoyable sideshow with the DUP publicly gutting one another, the hypocrisy laid bare, the supposedly evangelical Christian values which inspired the party exposed as a meretricious façade.

Better still, the whole spectacle is free, but it’s a sideshow nevertheless.

The main event has been taking place slowly for some years now but has gathered pace since the dirty deal Theresa May did with the DUP last July. Slowly but inexorably this British government, recklessly encouraged by the DUP, has been dismantling the Good Friday Agreement. Oh, the British government pays lip service to it, repeats often how they want to maintain it, but you’ll note they never include the key phrase in last December’s joint report, ‘in all its parts’.

Most obviously, the British have abandoned the requirement of ‘rigorous impartiality’ and, among other injunctions, ‘full respect for parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities’.

In every speech May trashes by omission the identity, ethos and aspirations of northern nationalists [Catholics]. She ignores them. For her, they don’t exist. There is no evidence that she feels any responsibility towards them. There’s no malice involved; just lack of vision and poverty of imagination. She’s a classic Home Counties Little Englander whose horizon is limited by the Cotswolds. Walking in Wales is a foreign adventure.

She has chosen to side with the DUP in an unprecedented and unnecessarily detailed and unequivocal fashion. The effect is that she has taken sides against nationalists[Catholics] which has produced alienation and polarization unseen for over thirty years. Each and every demand of the DUP is granted, none of the demands too obviously outrageous, but taken together deeply damaging to political progress much less to any prospect of reconciliation here.

Currently May is in the process of dismantling the deal struck on the past after lengthy negotiations 2014-6. They haven’t said it in so many words but the DUP has reneged on it. The UUP, which admittedly doesn’t count, but which can usually be taken as a bellwether for the DUP position, has now openly opposed the deal.

Supported by the DUP, the British government has been working to find some manoeuvre to insert a statute of limitations for security force personnel. Although that is a separate matter from the Stormont House and Fresh Start legacy deals, it’s going to prevent their implementation. As it is, they won’t be enacted without some arrangement which placates the parade of Colonel Blimps who’ve appeared in the British press since early 2017. Now unionists are agitating to change the definition of victim in any consideration of the past. Nibble, nibble.

One of the most serious developments as a result of DUP objections has been the complete exclusion of the Irish government from any role in negotiations. Stormont House and Fresh Start both involved the Irish government as of right, sometimes at the table, sometimes not, but always a participant. No longer.

At the behest of the DUP the Irish government is kept at arms length. The best evidence for this is the recent British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference meeting; a deliberate slight to Coveney. There was no joint statement, no joint press conference and the British didn’t even provide a room for the Irish side to hold their own press conference. Instead they had to conduct it alfresco with traffic whizzing past. All to mollify the DUP.

Now we know that Theresa May is, in the words of George Osborne, ‘a dead woman walking’. Once Brexit happens next March the Conservatives will dump her. There could be a general election before that but it’s unlikely, given the fixed parliament legislation. In any event, the DUP’s stranglehold on progress will end. The question is whether that will mean a return to joint government action in the north or has so much damage been done that it will take years to repair?

On the other hand, perhaps an incoming British government will be so right wing and xenophobic – consider the favourites to succeed May – they will not wish to restore relations with Dublin but will resolve to dismantle the GFA completely.