BORIS Johnson's proroguing of parliament has put the UK's constitution in the same position as the Good Friday Agreement: it may not have been breached in the letter but if a large chunk of the population thinks it has been breached in spirit, it is broken regardless.
Sticking to the letter of an unwritten constitution was never going to be a solid proposition.
It is a desperate move that would have been even more drastic were it not for the emergency legislation to extend Stormont talks, rushed through Westminster in July.
This was famously amended by backbenchers to require same-sex marriage and abortion. But it was also amended by Remainers to require a Commons debate on Stormont progress on September 9.
That is is why Johnson has not been able to prorogue parliament immediately, giving MPs seven days in the Commons to block his Brexit plans or even bring down his government - an ironic outcome for a law meant to restore devolution.
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Nobody expects Sinn Féin to turn up in the Commons during those seven critical days and we are all familiar with its arguments why.
However, another of those arguments has fallen by the wayside. Not only is there no doubt Sinn Féin's seven MPs would be decisive during no-deal or no confidence votes, but there is no chance other MPs would rally against it in outrage at the appearance of Irish republicans, as the party has long claimed.
The Shinners are now the only people on earth who think Sinn Féin is more important than Brexit.
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Prorogation triggers the renewal clause in the DUP-Tory confidence and supply agreement, which the DUP has welcomed as a chance to extract more cash for schools, hospitals and "safety".
This has struck many observers as delusional. Why would Johnson agree anything close to another £1 billion over two years - the terms of the last agreement - when he clearly plans an imminent election that should rid the Tories of dependence on the DUP?
The answer is that he still needs the DUP until he forces an election, although Parliament may only sit until then for a combined total of three weeks.
What size of cheque would Johnson write for Northern Ireland for such a brief period of support - and assuming he is re-elected, what are the chances of him honouring it afterwards?
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The DUP looks even more delusional for launching a policy document entitled 'Building Our Exports' on the day prorogation was announced.
It is heroic at any time to consider how Stormont might make the best of Brexit, but especially over recent weeks
There is a hopeful nugget of sanity in the document, which is based around a new industrial strategy for Northern Ireland.
Such a strategy was proposed by Sinn Féin in June last year as a basis for reviving devolution.
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A portrait of the Queen that offended a civil servant at the Northern Ireland Office has been put back up at the instruction of new secretary of state Julian Smith.
Unionists welcomed the move as a victory for common sense, while everyone else chortled at an official statement that the portrait is now accompanied by "a balanced set of images celebrating and reflecting the work of the Northern Ireland Office".
Those images include the Queen meeting the Irish president and Prince Charles meeting Catholic clergy, in a similar vein to the picture of the Queen with Martin McGuinness added after the civil servant's complaint. That reportedly satisfied his concerns, before nervous NIO bosses took all the pictures down. So acceptance of the initial complaint still stands.
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Belfast City Council has published a no-deal Brexit plan warning of uncollected bins and civil unrest, which will sound to many residents like life as normal.
While Brexit could affect services, the council has a reputation for breathless catastrophism.
Last year it appointed an £83,000-per-year 'Commissioner for Resilience' to plan for natural and man-made disasters.
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State papers just published from 1984 reveal that at a meeting with her advisers on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Margaret Thatcher said: "Why can't those people who don't want to be in the UK be moved to the Irish Republic?"
The revelation was denounced this week by Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson as "Britannic jingoism".
Anderson is apparently unaware that in the first draft of Sinn Féin's 1987 paper A Scenario for Peace, which it considers the seminal document of the peace process, it demanded "resettlement grants" for unionists to move to Britain.
