The Stormont Executive is playing chicken with a budgetary crisis, but the DUP and Sinn Fein show no sign of giving ground

The former SDLP Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon famously quipped that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was “Sunningdale for slow learners”. I wonder how he might describe the St Andrew’s Agreement, which didn’t arrive until 2006.

Sunningdale, Good Friday and St Andrews all deliver the same thing: power-sharing government at Stormont with cross-border cooperation.

Now the DUP leader Peter Robinson – who is also First Minister, remember – is suggesting the current arrangements ...