There are moments when it seems that something is really going on in the North, that deserves to be described as ‘the peace process’. There are others when we are clearly surrounded by high farce, and the only reasonable response is laughter – loud, uproarious, despair-filled laughter. On the one hand there is the revelation that the British government have been negotiating with Sinn Féin, and the positive shifts which underlie this development. The Observer quoted a key British source as acknowledging that there is an ‘ethical dimension’ to the ideology of the Provisional IRA, an observation which would previously have been deemed heretical for any establishment politician or civil servant to make. But no matter how profoundly wrong the Provisionals’ murderous campaign has been the observation is true, and it suggests that there are at least some people on the British side who are looking at the dynamics of the conflict in the North in a genuinely realistic and open-minded way.

In the same spirit, John Hume’s speech to the SDLP conference, delivered on the weekend that the revelations of British government dialogue with Sinn Féin were putting the political future of Northern Ireland Secretary Patrick Mayhew and even that of the Prime Minister John Major into jeopardy, represented a truly generous attempt to reach out across the divide to thinking, feeling people of Unionist background. There is a lot about the SDLP’s politics that I dislike but this was a decent, measured and occasionally inspiring contribution to a debate that too often flounders in a quagmire of opportunism and insincerity.

But those tenuous sparks of hope were accompanied by another more familiar noise coming from the DUP Conference in Belfast. Previously the party had promised to Save Ulster From Sodomy. Now they were merely promising to Save Ulster – funds for the campaign being raised by the sale of car stickers bearing the witty legend ‘Keep Ulster Tidy – Dump your Litter in the Irish Republic’ and other similarly tasteful gimcracks, including Glasgow Rangers rulers and King William of Orange tea towels.

This low-rent bazaar was accompanied by a vaudevillian presentation, with Punch and Judy-style depiction of heroes and villains – foul abuse of political opponents was the intellectual summit of the exercise, the colourful extremism of the language serving only to underline the complete and utter refusal of the party and its leadership to contemplate any ideas, attitudes, beliefs or aspirations other than their own.

To read Ian Paisley’s speech to the DUP Conference is monumentally depressing. Not that it isn’t utterly predictable in its inflamed resort to familiar Biblical mumbo-jumbo – but it does emphasise once again the sheer pointlessness of attempting to get the DUP to any table to talk. When bigotry and prejudice are accompanied by threats of ‘war’, then truly the hope of achieving a peaceful settlement, with the DUP involved, seem forlorn. And without them?

The blatant lies being told by the British government about their contacts with Sinn Féin; the glorious assumption of statesmanship by Albert Reynolds; the sad sincerity of John Hume; the apparently cynical sniping by Gerry Adams; the mealy-mouthed cuteness of James Molyneaux; and the crazed ranting and raving of Ian Paisley and his cohorts would make for good pantomime material if the issues involved weren’t so deadly serious. And so in the words of Leonard Cohen, all you can do in the end is laugh and cry and laugh and cry about it all again.

Only the laughter is hollow.

• Niall Stokes