Restoring Stormont has never had much of a ring to it, truth be told. Many people clearly regard devolved government as a good career opportunity. Their desire is veiled, however: too many ifs and buts involved in restoring devolution to shout it from the rooftops, writes Fionnuala O Connor
Though the DUP and Sinn Féin have most to gain from a return to Stormont, neither shows any urgency. One reason is obvious, if undeclared. With little or no experience of governing but deserved faith in their own electioneering, they may both have decided that elections without assemblies are the more profitable form of politics, an end in itself. Poll without power-sharing: the secret slogan.
Northern Ireland is now a two-party state, a situation some still prefer not to contemplate. Any advance has to come from within the DUP or Sinn Féin, preferably both, who between them hold more than half the assembly members elected last November; 33 and 24 respectively. But the argument for stalling may be compelling.
Several Southern parties are plainly rattled about Sinn Féin's prospects in the Republic. Far from searching out Northern solutions, Sinn Féin looks more concerned to build ever more young recruits into its Southern electoral machine, as though to underline its contempt at the anger about its other muscle, the IRA. Like the DUP, SF sees success stretching ahead: Euro-elections on both sides of the Border, the next local government poll, the next election to Westminster, perhaps a marked increase in the Dáil.
But surface immobility in Northern politics disguises faint currents inside the new main parties, the effects of which are still unreadable. Far from seismic, their significance is that they have happened at all.
When republican veteran John Kelly publicly criticised the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness during the ardfheis weekend, first on a BBC television programme and then at greater length in the Irish News, still the essential morning paper for nationalist politicos, it was more niggle than shock.
His charges had some resonance in the wider republican world - echoes from the Irish News letters page, for example - but lacked focus. The essence of John Kelly's criticism was that it was hard to see why the IRA was still needed. It was also disrespectful to the IRA for Gerry Adams to deny membership, he said.
A forceful man, he has said nothing since. The ripples continue, however, because a lesser figure had something to add. Martin Cunningham, a hitherto unheard-of South Down SF councillor, resigned admitting he was disappointed to be deselected as an assembly candidate in favour of the Belfast-based southerner, Caitriona Ruane, who is clearly being groomed to take the constituency in the next Westminster election.
He blamed neighbouring and always more militant "South Armagh", which he complained controlled "the area - they didn't just walk over me, they walked over the people of South Down. I was put down by a few who ignored the views of many. There is a total lack of democracy in the party."
The effect was weakened by the wildness of the follow-up: "SDLP are not any better. It's tribal gang warfare." Furious reaction from the relegated is routine in political parties. In Sinn Féin, it has been well hidden until now.
Students of the SDLP's decline have long pointed to a particularly telling difference in the way the two parties approach election campaigns. The SDLP has often left ageing, sometimes plainly fading, candidates in place, in some cases because there was no alternative, in others because of sentiment.
This is not Sinn Féin's way. "It's always been the tap on the shoulder and, here you, we need your seat," as a veteran SDLP activist says dourly. He will have enjoyed the first whisper of authentic political resentment, the first hint of that normal off-stage phenomenon, the spouse fuming "Why isn't it you?"
The DUP's internal differences have not been aired so vividly, but one example popped out when a fistful of candidates emerged to vie for their leader's European seat. First there was the minor figure of Maurice Morrow, an assemblyman and longtime councillor, presented as endorsed by Ian Paisley jnr.
The leader's chosen one, end of discussion? On the contrary, further hopefuls turned out before a selection procedure gave the candidature to Jim Allister, a considerable individual from an earlier era, when he was a close associate of deputy leader Peter Robinson.
By DUP standards, this was more than glacial movement. As inside republicanism, the relaxation of the discipline that suppressed so many egos for so long in the name of solidarity against a hostile world made way for a flicker of irreverence towards figureheads formerly unquestioned. Hardly a Prague Spring: peacetime behaviour all the same.