Nevertheless, and without straining yet another deeply imperfect parallel, the distinction between Orangeism and Unionism would in theory help to throw into sharp relief the paradox that Sinn Fein, a political organisation apparently committed to the ballot box, remains inextricably linked to an army which has yet to prove that it is equally so committed.More practically, it might be bad news for forces ranged against the Good Friday Agreement, and not only because it would reduce the large minority which came close to unseating David Trimble at the last meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council. The conventional wisdom is that in the short term it will strengthen the DUP, at a time when the Ulster Unionist Party has seen its electoral performance become increasingly unsure over recent years That could well be so. But in the longer term it might make the possibility of Catholics voting for the Ulster Unionists a shade likelier, at least in those seats where it represented the only hope of defeating a hard-line anti-agreement Protestant.Just as some loyalists were reputed to have voted for the SDLP candidate Joe Hendron in West Belfast as a means of keeping Sinn Fein out, so parallel behaviour by Catholics could not, perhaps, be necessarily ruled out – for example in Mr Trimble’s own seat in North Armagh where one of Northern Ireland’s most prominent Orangemen, Dennis Watson, is expected to stand as the DUP candidate. Certainly nationalists would be more rather than less likely to vote in such a way, if the links with the irrevocably Protestant Orange Order were broken.Indeed, just as with the unions and the Labour Party in Great Britain, there is an argument that both institutions would benefit from the separation.

As the Labour MP Harry Barnes pointed out yesterday, it could both help the UUP to broaden its electoral base while allowing the Orange Order to assert itself as a genuinely cultural, rather than a political, organisation.Having said this, we shouldn’t go overboard. Mr Trimble’s move is interesting, perhaps, in the long term, very interesting. But against a still fairly sombre background, it is no more than that. It certainly does not solve what yet may be a crisis for the Good Friday Agreement. The reason that Tony Blair is making a day-trip across the Irish Sea this morning is not because there has been some sudden breakthrough in the intensive talks aimed at rescuing the Agreement and restarting the devolved institutions.

It is rather, to underline the urgency of finding just such a solution in circumstances in which time is no longer necessarily on the parties’ sides.It may also allow him, by directly meeting the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, to untie a few of the knots that have occurred in tireless officials-to-officials talks. For there is, as there has been for many weeks, theoretical territory on which such a solution might be created in the wake of the suspension of the Assembly and Executive in mid-February. Both Peter Mandelson, several times, and David Trimble – in Washington on his St Patrick’s Day visit – have indicated that actual decommissioning of IRA weapons does not have to be a precondition of a return to devolution (particularly as it was not specified as such in the Agreement) if an alternative signal of the republicans’ good faith can be substituted for it.But for Mr Trimble to carry his own party this has to be robust. At the very least, there would surely have to be some unequivocal statement from the IRA that the war is over, coupled with some form of time-frame for decommissioning, however elongated from the one specified on 22 May and however linked to the British Government’s promise to implement its own part in the Agreement – Patten report and all. And it is probable that the IRA’s bottom line would have to be made public. Nods and winks to General de Chastelaine, the Canadian appointed to oversee decommissioning, didn’t work back in February and they probably wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the Unionists now.The reason for the renewed push is partly this.

In four days, there is the second anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. After Easter – always a difficult time for the peace process as Irish republicanism commemorates the 1916 Rising – there is the beginning of the long marching season. On 22 May there is the deadline originally set for decommissioning. Admittedly that is now wholly notional, not least since the Agreement envisaged a much longer period of devolution than the nine weeks of it that actually happened from December to February But it remains a psychologically important moment. And in the longer term – but perhaps not as long as some may complacently believe – there is the real danger of a return to violence if politics cannot once again triumph in Northern Ireland.Mr Blair’s visit is a timely reminder that the British Government is still engaged at the highest level. And that there will never be a better moment to break the remaining deadlocks than in the next few short weeks.. One in 10 employers still discriminates on age when recruiting and promoting staff, a new report claims today.