A visitor to the Parliament Buildings at Stormont, having walked three or four furlongs down a hard, straight, empty roadway and skirted the large bronze statue of Lord Carson in a double-breasted suit making an energetic, obscure but not obviously friendly gesture in the visitor’s direction, finds that behind the plinth a row of bollards blocks the roadway, which is painted with large capital letters: “NO ENTRY”.

It is hard to love the exterior of the Stormont buildings, so bare are they on the acres of lawns, and staring, with four storeys each 27 windows wide, cut out of alien Portland stone.