Of all the ghosts, ghouls and nasty things which threatened us this week, the most frightening, we were told, was the prospect of direct rule.
Depicted as a sort of English banshee, which would herald the death of our native intransigence, it threatened the salaries and expenses of the headless horsemen and women up at Stormont.
But is direct rule really that scary, or is it just a bit of fancy dress created by the local parties in their own interest? Sadly, the evidence suggests that there is little difference between rule from Belfast and rule from London. There should be, but there is not.
Both will fail to deliver, because both are governed by Westminster's economic policy of neo-liberalism, an extreme form of Thatcherism, which even Margaret Thatcher never reached. (In all the agreements about power sharing, no one asked how much power the state should keep for sharing and how much should go to the private sector.)
There are two standard reasons for Stormont's defence. The first is that local politicians can make 'better' decisions than those from across the water and the second is that, unlike British ministers, we can hold local ministers accountable.
The first is a triumph of geography over experience. The second suggests a frail grasp on reality.
There is little evidence to support the pro-geography argument. In education, for example, direct rule ministers were about to abandon academic selection before the assembly reconvened in 2007. (Yes, Sinn Féin had already abolished it, but only in the sense of closing their eyes and pretending it was not there.)
It was agreed at St Andrews, at the behest of the DUP, that the assembly should decide the issue. For the ten years it was one of the most divisive issues in Stormont. (How can educational theory become sectarian?)
Indeed they made it so sectarian that we now have two types of academic selection, Protestant and Catholic. (Some children sit both tests. Presumably if they do better in one than the other, it allows a religious interpretation of their genetic make-up.) Meanwhile the education budget declined annually and most schools are now broke. Is education an example of a 'better' decision?
The idea that local politicians are somehow accountable is equally flawed. Who was held accountable for the DUP's Red Sky scandal; Sinn Féin's £700,000 claim for research services from a firm which it ran; Nama's £1.3 billion property sale which cost the taxpayer £300 million; the RHI scheme; the Casement Park debacle; the funding of groups linked to loyalist paramilitaries and the sectarian use of the Strategic Investment Fund?
You might ask who would have been held accountable for these scandals under direct rule. The answer is that most, if not all, would almost certainly not have occurred under direct rule. While I am no fan of British ministers, it is hard to imagine them creating the administrative and ethical chaos which marked what was perhaps the most scandal-ridden period in the scandalous history of this state's government.
In my experience of working under both local and British ministers, they tended to have different approaches to decision-making. British ministers managed as if they were running a business. Irish ministers managed as if they were running an election. One took advice from civil servants. The other took instructions from Spads (special advisers).
Remember that Stormont was a system of government with no opposition (a situation which few, apart from this column, appeared to find odd). When an opposition was finally created last year, Stormont collapsed within seven months.
Some argue that Tory policy under a Belfast government differs little from Tory policy directly from London. Those who disagree (and they are by far the majority) might explain how the one in four children living in poverty here would know whether they were ruled by Belfast or London.
How would a patient on a hospital trolley, waiting for a bed, recognise whether he/she was ruled by Stormont or Westminster? Perhaps we should train medical staff to say, "Count your blessings you are on a Stormont trolley. Think how much worse you would be on one from Westminster."
Yes, Stormont could be much better than direct rule. To date, it has not been. Of course, it can change. But if SF and the DUP do not intend to run Stormont as a democratic institution (and that means transparency, no petitions of concern and no sectarian carve-up of slush funds and patronage) then there is no point in bringing it back.
If it does not return, we may have to live contentedly with the ghost of Stormont past.
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