The familiar charge has risen again that the British and Irish governments are taking flight from the electorate for fear of the result, but the British Prime Minister insists he is acting in the interests of saving the agreement, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
In the end Tony Blair decided to keep faith with David Trimble and - above all, as he would have it - with the Belfast Agreement. Sinn Féin would contemptuously dismiss the second of these assertions.
The Democratic Unionist Party, arguably the more genuinely and justifiably outraged, will have no difficulty recognising the truth of both. Predictably both parties led the chorus of complaint yesterday even before the British Prime Minister announced his decision to defer the scheduled elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In unintended tribute to the range of British sovereign power Ms Bairbre de Brún, health minister in the former Stormont executive, accused Mr Blair of cancelling democracy in Ireland.
The DUP MP, Mr Nigel Dodds, repeated the already familiar charge that Mr Blair had entered the company of the Pinochets of this world in taking flight from the electorate for fear of the result.
And it can hardly be denied that the DUP has a point in complaining it has now been "robbed" of an election for a second time and the opportunity to confirm its position at the helm of current majority unionist opinion.
Certainly the DUP is not alone in contending that there should have been an election in October 2001, when Mr Trimble's mandate expired and he lost his unionist majority at Stormont.
That was the notorious occasion when members of the Alliance Party and Women's Coalition redesignated themselves as "unionist" for the day in order to secure Mr Trimble's re-election as first minister.
There were few cries then about the democratic imperative. To the contrary, while a tiny number of commentators complained about a blatant denial of the principle of dual community consent central to the agreement itself, the two governments and the other pro-agreement parties held their collective nose and looked the other way.
So Dr Paisley's party will feel entitled to feast on a double helping of outrage now. The painful truth for Sinn Féin, however, is that the re-designation saga only served to illustrate David Trimble's fidelity to the Belfast Agreement, and the extent to which he was prepared to go to preserve it.
And it was Mr Trimble's fidelity still to the agreement which finally persuaded Mr Blair yesterday to come down in favour of the Ulster Unionist leader and against them.
Before entering his Downing Street press conference yesterday the Prime Minister knew only too well the complaint set to rage in nationalist/republican Ireland: that he had bowed to pressure from an Ulster Unionist leader in hock to "rejectionist" unionism, if not himself now tacitly anti-agreement.
However, Mr Blair was having none of it. Had the IRA given clear-cut assurance that it was ceasing all the paramilitary activities defined in the joint British-Irish declaration, he had no doubt Mr Trimble "would have cut the deal".
Indeed, in the chaos and confusion to which the British-Irish negotiation with the IRA has been reduced in recent weeks, it is insufficiently recognised that - even as deadline after deadline slipped to the point of the seemingly impossible - Mr Trimble appeared ready to risk the implosion of his party in the teeth of the election.
For, as The Irish Times reported, the UUP leader was being urged by senior colleagues to exclude leading dissidents like Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside from his list of nominated Ulster Unionist candidates if they refused to endorse a manifesto committing the party to resume power-sharing with Sinn Féin.
Mr Blair would certainly have been conscious of the astonishing risks attendant on what would have been Mr Trimble's very own "act of completion".
The Prime Minister was also clear yesterday that it was not at all in deference to Mr Trimble, but in a final bid to save the agreement, that he had reluctantly decided to postpone the May 29th poll.
The mystery was that it had taken Downing Street so long to grasp the point. But finally Mr Blair had it: an election in these circumstances would "frustrate the very purpose of the agreement itself". Moreover, while the Irish Government had plainly opposed the deferment of elections, it was significant that Mr Blair associated Dublin with the overall assessment that an election now would not have produced a functioning assembly and executive.
The arithmetic seemed clear. Whatever the precise breakdown of seats, the DUP with the Donaldson-led wing of the UUP would command a unionist majority; reject all efforts to elect first and deputy first ministers and nominate an executive; and demand a renegotiation.
Assuming a position of strength which was far from convincing in the circumstances, Mr Blair again insisted there would be no renegotiation.
Interestingly, too - his distaste seemingly fuelled by Dr Paisley's personal abuse of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen - Mr Blair dismissed the idea that the DUP might produce an inclusive settlement as so much pie-in-the-sky.
Irish Ministers and officials may not care for any reminder that the possible attractions of a DUP ascendancy enjoyed some currency in Dublin only a short time ago.
However, it seems this is not a point of dispute with London now. While Downing Street acknowledges that the disagreement over Mr Blair's election call was real, and not simply for the optics, it is also clear that Mr Blair's decision has generated none of the heat of battle provoked by Mr Peter Mandelson's original suspension of the agreement in February 2000.
Rather the maturity and the reality of the Anglo-Irish relationship will see Mr Blair with Mr Ahern in Dublin next Tuesday, summoning the reserves of energy and commitment necessary to endure it all again in a further attempt to secure the clarity and certainty about IRA intentions necessary to provide any prospect of successfully restoring Northern Ireland's institutions of government.
It is their last chance. And there is no guarantee of success, no guarantee that the agreement is coming back. Mr Blair appeared stumped when asked if he would postpone again in the autumn if he found himself still without a deal sufficient to bring the Ulster Unionists back on board.
The Prime Minister can certainly count on David Trimble's every effort to bring that day about. However - and perhaps not least because of the damage accrued during what even Mr Blair seemed to recognise had come to be seen as something of a pantomime over recent weeks - Mr Trimble may be no more able to deliver a unionist majority in October than he would have been on May 29th.
And if Mr Blair seriously discounts the DUP's capacity to negotiate an alternative agreement, Northern Ireland may well be stuck with direct rule for some time to come.