Sam McBride: Brokenshire bending over backwards to show he doesn't want direct rule

In fact, the secretary of state yesterday told the Commons little more than it already knew.

The most significant revelation was that he is preparing to bring forward budgetary legislation – using Westminster to pass the law because there is seemingly no prospect of Stormont sitting in the foreseeable future.

However, even that threat of sorts was heavily caveated, with Mr Brokenshire stressing that Stormont’s top civil servant, David Sterling, had indicated that such legislation was not needed immediately.

What is becoming clear is just how exceptionally unenthusiastic Mr Brokenshire and the government are about implementing direct rule.

When asked about the possibility of direct rule, he told MPs: “We are very firmly not looking at interventions that are even getting to [that] point.”

The Conservative manifesto ruled out joint London-Dublin authority of Northern Ireland, leaving direct rule as the only immediate alternative to devolution.

Aware that nationalism – and the Irish government – will be alarmed by a move to direct rule, it would seem that Mr Brokenshire is bending over backwards to show that he has no desire to retake direct control of governing Northern Ireland.

It is also almost certainly the case that Mr Brokenshire is genuinely disinclined to taking responsibility for running health, education and every other devolved responsibility.

If that point does come – as it surely must if the DUP and Sinn Fein cannot agree to form an Executive – Mr Brokenshire will certainly be able to say that it has been a reluctant decision made out of necessity rather than by choice.

But the risk for him is that if there is some crisis in any of the public sector in Northern Ireland or some shortcoming in the Stormont response to any catastrophe, then it is he – along with the DUP and Sinn Fein – who could be in line for blame.

In attempting to resolutely allow the local parties the time in which to form an Executive, Mr Brokenshire has allowed to drift a situation in which there is no budget, no democratic accountability – and seemingly little sanction for the absence of either.