DIFFERENT people have different views of what closer ties between the SDLP and Fianna Fáil might look like but it's hard to imagine anybody ever envisaged what was presented to us yesterday.
The venue for the launch of this "historic" partnership was the fourth floor of Belfast city centre's Artola House, a recently refurbished linen mill dating from the 1870s.
It is a cold, stark space, lacking in personality. After listening to Micheál Martin and Colum Eastwood outline the details, or lack thereof, of the new cooperative venture between their respective parties, the choice felt rather appropriate.
It really should have been a milestone moment in a process that has been mooted for more than a decade. It could have been the fanfare for a new era in Irish politics, heralding a paradigm shift, north and south, that would strike fear into electoral opponents.
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What we ended up with was a half-hearted, half-baked plan with no electoral commitments beyond Fianna Fáil adding what its leader called "capacity" to the SDLP's campaigns.
The event concluded with a love-in, SDLP MLAs mingling with Fianna Fáil TDs as they chatted over tea and biscuits before the latter retreated back across the border. You sensed they'll be in no hurry to come back.
The two parties will remain two very separate entities while engaging in developing common policy platforms to address political deadlock in the north, Brexit, and deteriorating public services.
Nothing wrong with the choice of issues they've chosen, albeit not especially original, but the approach is wishy-washy, not the "unprecedented programme of public engagement" as billed.
The policy documents will ultimately gather dust as the two parties grow weary of a relationship that lacks dynamism and clear goals.
The way to make a gamble pay is to play with high stakes but instead, for whatever reason, the ante for this initiative was minimal, barely worth an announcement.
Questions about where the partnership may go in the future were answered evasively and as if to highlight the lack of appetite south of the border, the Dublin-based media who'd made the trip north chose to quiz Mr Martin on Brexit-related issues rather than future relations with the SDLP.
Sinn Féin voters would be the primary target were this partnership ever to stand in an election but based on yesterday's evidence Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O'Neill can sleep easy in their beds.
Read more:
- SDLP and Fianna Fáil enter partnership 'to restore faith in politics'
- Analysis: The key to a successful SDLP/Fianna Fáil partnership will be maintaining momentum
