Blair or Howard? What difference would it make for Bertie Ahern? Frank Millar considers the conseqences of the UK election for Ireland.
Britain's relations with Ireland and the rest of Europe will go into what diplomats might call "uncharted waters" if Michael Howard slips in the back door of 10 Downing Street next Friday morning. And Tony Blair's "Nightmare on Howard Street" would reverberate around Europe's capitals, as EU leaders pondered the prospects for Prime Minister Howard's upcoming European presidency on the back of a predicted French No to the European constitution.
Mr Howard has said the first item of business for a newly elected Conservative government would be to set the date for a referendum in which, six months on, he would urge the British people to reject the constitution.
It is difficult, for want of a better word, to see how "President" Howard could temporarily embody the spirit of the Union and help repair the damage of any act of French vandalism to the grand project.
"We'd be into crisis from the outset," says one Blair aide as he contemplates a Conservative agenda to withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy and the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees. His only consolation was that Mr Howard would struggle to find any European leader willing to grant the still-unidentified offshore island in which the Conservative leader says future asylum-seekers will be processed before ever setting foot in the UK.
Closer to home, and on matters perhaps of still more immediate concern, even Taoiseach Bertie Ahern would be wondering how on earth to make Mr Howard his new best friend - if only for the sake of the "peace process." A Conservative source said last night they would value the Anglo-Irish relationship and seek to develop it in the ongoing search for a comprehensive settlement in Northern Ireland.
But he added: "We would not engage in Labour's policy of making serial concessions to Sinn Féin or make shabby deals with any party." As a party "which values the United Kingdom", he said, a Conservative administration would show "much greater warmth to the Union". And a Howard government would resist any suggestion of joint authority as a violation of the principle of consent.
In the absence of devolved government, the Tories say they would seek to make direct rule more accountable. The bad news for Mr Ahern, should it come to pass, is that this would provide a neat point of convergence with Dr Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, on whose MPs Mr Howard could find himself dependent for a sustainable Commons majority.
To even allow the "nightmare" scenario is to understand why the majority in Ireland - whatever their disillusion with Mr Blair - are probably cheered by the constant polling evidence pointing to a historic third Labour victory.
In terms of the domestic priority, Northern Ireland, the Taoiseach will have tentative thoughts as to how he and Mr Blair might try to get the peace and political processes back on the road. Mr Ahern will hope Mr Blair's majority is big enough to dispel talk about an early handover to Gordon Brown.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams provocatively suggested a while back that the peace process might prove more enduring than Mr Blair's tenure in office.
However, there are doubts in official Irish circles - as there are inside 10 Downing Street - about whether Prime Minister Brown would prove as committed, or as indulgent of the Northern Ireland parties. Mr Ahern will also be hoping that a large Blair majority will restrain the natural instinct of key Downing Street personnel to look to pastures new.
Not, of course, that the continued presence of seasoned officials will be able to compensate for the loss of much of the Blair-Bertie magic which helped deliver the original Belfast Agreement.
The authority and credibility of both men have been damaged in the political fallout from the Northern Bank robbery, with the SDLP's Seamus Mallon accusing them of constructing a template for the destruction of the centre ground in Northern Ireland.
With Dr Paisley's rise seemingly unstoppable, success or failure there will turn more than ever on the dispositions of the Provisional IRA.
However, it will not be for want of trying on Mr Blair's part, as he looks ever more urgently to his legacy after a third and final term.
The disappointment across much of Ireland, bordering on disbelief perhaps, is that Britain's assumption of a leadership role at the heart of Europe now looks unlikely to define Mr Blair's place in the history books.
Mr Blair's foreign policy objectives for what he insists will be a full third term are still pitched in characteristically grandiose New Labour language.
He can hardly be accused of lacking ambition or compassion in pledging with Chancellor Brown to prioritise climate change and Africa through Britain's EU presidency and leadership of the G8.
At the Gleneagles summit in July Blair and Brown will seek to forward the recommendations of the Africa Commission for a doubling of international aid backed by agreement to an International Finance Facility.
With Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories scheduled to begin in July there will be a renewed focus on the search for a Middle East peace settlement.
In Iraq the British will encourage the further "Iraqisation" of the internal security effort, alongside the push for a new constitution ahead of the free elections promised for December.
Unlike Liberal Democrats leader Charles Kennedy, however, Downing Street says Mr Blair will not get locked into "some artificial timetable" for the withdrawal of British troops. And if the EU constitution survives the French referendum, Mr Blair is committed to a British vote early next year.
However, aides say the prime minister will not seek to repair any damage resulting from a French No to the point of embracing "a Chirac view" of the future of Europe.