Aftermath - Analysis: Ahern and Blair will still drive the dynamic, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
David Trimble slept on it overnight on Friday and did what he had to do on Saturday. While the DUP, Sinn Féin and the SDLP celebrated differing degrees of success in the Westminster election, Ulster Unionists must consider radical surgery.
They must also wonder is the illness that afflicts the party terminal. They will be hoping that the party's performance in the local elections, whose counts begin today, brings some relief and hope.
Dublin and London must also do some thinking. Paul Murphy, that courteous, likeable man whose gift was to calm troubled political waters, gave way for a more forceful figure in Peter Hain, to replace him as Northern Secretary.
Hain postponed his visit to his splendid new Hillsborough Castle home until today, although he was in contact with the parties over the weekend. His first encounter with Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson should be interesting, however, judging by a speech he made as a junior foreign minister in Sri Lanka in 2000, which BBC Northern Ireland's political editor Mark Devenport unearthed at the weekend.
Hain, in a talk on conflict resolution, explained to his audience how "after 1921 nationalists were effectively excluded from power by a unionist majority which ruled with intolerance, injustice and blatant discrimination against Catholics". Nationalists won't challenge that analysis but Dr Paisley and his deputy leader may feel disposed to accuse him of bias before he is properly planted behind his desk.
Some eyebrows were also raised that Hain is combining the Northern job with the post of Welsh secretary. Does that not indicate that Tony Blair is taking a diminished interest in Northern Ireland? Definitely not, said Hain. The new man will bring a new impetus to politics here but the real dynamic will continue to be driven by Blair and Bertie Ahern. This issue is still personal for prime minister and Taoiseach.
They want to see their names stamped in the history books as the leaders who properly finished the job. Whether they can achieve that goal is primarily down to Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. In the course of this election campaign, Adams acknowledged Blair's commitment to the peace process and said, if possible, he wanted to see it concluded during what remains of the prime minister's watch.
Based on experience, both governments are cautious about attaching too much weight to the Sinn Féin president's pronouncements but there is still a view in Dublin and London - with all the usual caveats - that what Gerry Adams said in urging the IRA to fully embrace peace and democracy "can't be unsaid".
But, to quote a senior London source, "a halfway house ain't going to work". In other words, if republicans deliver short, as they did to David Trimble, then there can be no deal. Ahern and Blair realise full well, and so must Adams, that Paisley and Robinson don't do creative ambiguity.
Adams still refuses to say when the IRA will respond to his urgings. If things are to move, the IRA can't delay too long. June or July could be the period for the response. In the meantime, the governments expect that senior Sinn Féin people will be seeking commitments that dramatic steps by the IRA will be reciprocated.
The governments will certainly talk to Sinn Féin but any chance of real progress is still down to whether the IRA will match Gerry Adams' words with actions. If it does - and the governments are not unhopeful - we will enter a sort of quarantine period when the DUP and the Independent Monitoring Commission test whether the IRA is off the stage. The IMC's latest report, yet to be published, confirms what the Taoiseach and PSNI chief constable have been saying - that the IRA is still recruiting and targeting.
Such a period to test republican bona fides would take us into next spring and possibly towards the autumn of 2006. Then, and probably well before, if the IRA has come up to the mark, the pressure will be on the DUP to do business with Sinn Féin.