Over to you, Mr Adams

DAYS after he was first elected, Tony Blair visited Belfast. There, he delivered what has proved to be the most significant speech of his premiership.

It was a mission statement to transform Northern Ireland’s political landscape. Within a couple of months, the IRA had - implicitly - clambered aboard his peace train, and resumed its ceasefire. Soon after came the Good Friday agreement, a stunning achievement despite the understandable grumblings.

Five years on, he was back. If the message to the IRA was much the same - come with us, or you will be left behind - it was delivered in an entirely different context. True, Northern Ireland’s peace is far from perfect, but republicans, whatever their bluster, now know that the political process works well for them - largely, of course, because they make sure it does. Certainly, they can turn violence to their own advantage, but the appetite for a return to the bad old days is gone, and a Prime Minister waging war on terror abroad is less likely to accept it at home.

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With the Good Friday agreement in trouble, Mr Blair has been criticised. Unionists - justifiably - feel he has made too many concessions to republicans, and turned a blind eye when it was pragmatic so to do. He has indeed been economical with the truth - notably over the fudge of arms decommissioning - so enticing Unionist doubters into backing the agreement. It was, though, done with the best of intentions.

But a policy of keeping republicans on board at almost any cost always ran the risk that there would come a day of reckoning. The government knew that, but thought it a risk worth taking.

So now Mr Blair is warning the IRA that it can no longer be half-in, half-out of the process. If this is an attempt to nail the old republican lie that Sinn Fein and the IRA are somehow distinct, well and good. But the IRA will not disband.

What he wants is for the IRA to say its war is over, done with, gone for good. There is a chance of that, a slim one. Over to you, Mr Adams.