THE most pathetic spectacle of the week was that of UUP and SDLP MLAs popping up and down in their seats during the assembly debate on welfare reform.
Everybody knew that the DUP would deploy a petition of concern against their collective amendments. Everybody knew that Robinson and McGuinness would ride roughshod over them. The very dogs in the street sat on the steps of Stormont on Tuesday morning and barked the reality of the situation as Nesbitt and McDonnell headed to the cameras and microphones in the Great Hall.
As the debate began the backbenchers from these shrinking parties wailed and bleated and moaned and whinged. It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was the sort of thing you would expect from lobotomised lab hamsters who have been deprived of their big wheel. It was poor-me, poor mouth babble and balls: a bizarre blend of siege mentality and Stockholm Syndrome.
The two happiest men in the building were Peter and Martin. Their serried ranks of MLAs sat like Stepford Wives, responding to every nod and wink and reading out their prepared scripts whenever the speaker called their name.
Not one of them raised any doubts or concerns about anything, because everything was just fine and dandy in their little world. The DUP, very helpfully, didn't bother pointing out that Sinn Féin had rolled over like kittens and, equally helpfully, Sinn Féin didn't bother tabling any amendments that would have discomfited either Simon Hamilton or Mervyn Storey.
Last autumn Robinson and McGuinness stared into the abyss and saw what would happen if they allowed the assembly to collapse. Neither of them had a Plan B (they've probably never had a Plan B). Neither of them had one of Baldrick's 'cunning plans.' All they had was each other. Robinson didn't want to listen to Jim Allister chortling and taunting him from the rubble and McGuinness didn't want Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin saying to a southern electorate "look what happens when you allow Sinn Féin into government". So neither of them jumped.
Now then, don't kid yourselves that this was the political equivalent of It's a Wonderful Life. There were no scenes of Peter and Martin running back from the abyss shouting "hello good old Lord Carson statue," "hello good old mutual veto and designated days policy".
There were just two men running for their lives and saving their own skins. Who knows if the bean counters will ever be able to make sense of what was agreed (money removed from one pot and then replaced with money borrowed from another) or if the list of promises and new quangos contained in the Stormont House Agreement will actually deliver anything. This was all about the optics and confounding their critics.
What matters, too, is that they have done enough to keep the show on the road until the 2016 assembly election, while providing some sort of evidence of having been able to do something in time for May's general election. It doesn't necessarily follow that a grateful nation will think more kindly of them, let alone sing the praises of devolution, but it does mean that the journey from a one-party state to a one-party-for-each-side state continues.
They have been helped immeasurably by the fact that Nesbitt and McDonnell seem congenitally incapable of nailing their own strategies into place.
There were two clear, very obvious responses to the wielding of the petitions of concern: they could have barracked and made it enormously difficult for the debate to continue or they could, finally, have decided that enough was enough and left the executive.
Instead, they sat there and took the humiliation and contempt. They took the jibes from the DUP and Sinn Féin. They didn't offer one scrap of evidence that they have a role to play or a reason to vote for them. They are right to point out that the DUP and Sinn Féin are undermining democracy, yet seem blissfully unaware that they are actively assisting them.
What will happen now? Well, the DUP and Sinn Féin will resume normal hostilities and batter each other around the head with conscience clauses and Irish language bills. At the same time they will launch separate campaigns against the UUP and SDLP - Robinson doesn't want the UUP to return to the Commons and McGuinness wants to add South Belfast to the Sinn Féin column.
So, if any reader knows what purpose the UUP and SDLP now serve perhaps they would contact their respective headquarters and let Mike and Alasdair know. But hey, there's no rush.