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As the DUP and Sinn Fein continue to engage in ‘call my bluff’ over the mechanisms of when and how to transfer policing and justice powers, they are both unwittingly fostering the disengagement of an increasingly cynical and sceptical electorate.

Without any sense of humour the new chief constable wryly says the £1 billion package is enough to do the job. Some think Buster Keaton could run policing with £1 billion.

The TUV, a rump party with overstated political ambitions, held their first party conference since giving the DUP a bloody nose in the EU elections.

The TUV-DUP relationship is increasingly becoming a kind of political allegory of Dorian Gray – only the DUP can’t find an attic big enough to hide the TUV.

Meanwhile, the Alliance Party tried unconvincingly to say that they would not be easily bought off for the forthcoming post of justice minister but the party that once had more quango sitters than politicians can hardly contain its leader from salivating at the prospect of supping the ‘gravy’ at the ministerial table.

In a further twist of irony Sinn Fein says it’s committed to ending political double-jobbing but within 24 hours selects minister and MLA Gerry Kelly to be their candidate as the would-be MP for North Belfast.

While the heirs-presumptive battle it out for the SDLP’s leadership, the congenial and competent Carmel Hanna is set to depart her South Belfast seat, leaving her precarious spoils to be scrapped over by an ambitious and media-savvy blogger and a former deputy lord mayor-cum councillor who toils at the coal face.

Exciting, isn’t it?

Nonetheless, the real challenge of the week lies at the door of the SDLP’s Ormeau Road HQ or in the in-trays of the two pretenders for the SDLP crown of thorns.

For some the forthcoming SDLP leadership election is an internal party political debate but, truly, only the politically devotional, deluded or desperate can believe that.

The issue of the criminal justice system and the devolution of its powers loom ominously not only over the heads of the political process but of the architects of that process – the SDLP.

There is an expectation that some of the architects within the SDLP are still so in love with their design (and designers) that they will once again roll over and settle for a belly tickle from the political establishment for accepting their lot as good sons of the Belfast Agreement. This policy was always geared for about as much political success as the British strategy to exit Afghanistan.

But why is the SDLP still wet-nursing Johnny-Come-Lately converts some 11 years after the agreement?

As one commentator put it, “the SDLP, having no umbilical cord to either sectarianism or terrorism, have somehow evolved into political guardians to the offspring of both camps”.

Increasingly the SDLP appear to spare the blushes of Sinn Fein in their fractious and at times subservient relationship to the DUP by providing a much-needed pan-nationalist political fig leaf. By perpetuating the bridesmaid role they have blurred their demarcation lines with Sinn Fein and the electorate has interpreted this as a willingness to play second fiddle to an all tin whistle band.

In terms of electoral benefit this policy is a bankrupt as the coffers of an Irish bank.

Unless the lure of ministerial Skodas is just too appealing, whoever leads the SDLP must decide sooner rather than later whether one ministerial seat still justifies their continued presence in the northern executive.

Ambitious SDLP young Turks would be better suited to cutting their teeth on the opposition benches. The ‘opposition in government’ strategy as a junior partner is too complex a farce for the public to understand and looks like shadow-boxing. Having rattled the cages and, despite warnings not to take them for granted, the SDLP has tended to bark rather than bite.

They now have a reason to bite.

Under d’Hondt the SDLP is entitled to the new policing and justice ministry. That a coalition of selfish interests including the Brits and Sinn Fein want to change the rules, thus ensuring that no nationalist will hold the post, is not so much the straw that breaks the back of the SDLP but it’s an unacceptable discriminatory yoke on the neck of all northern nationalists.

Despite Alliance bleats, a shared future is unobtainable when equal opportunity is continually denied to the nationalist community from the executive table down. Bite now, SDLP, or hand back the teeth.