Analysis: In the wake of the Westminster election results for Northern Ireland yesterday, the big question is can the centre hold, can the Belfast Agreement survive?
The middle ground is certainly shook - in unionist terms to a seismic degree - but the principles of the Good Friday accord persist.
On the nationalist side yesterday centrist politics held up reasonably firmly with the SDLP winning three seats against huge odds - with some unionist help.
The Ulster Unionists represent the moderate voice in unionist politics but yesterday that voice was virtually silenced. The DUP finally took David Trimble's scalp. His international standing, his Nobel peace prize, his UUP leadership could not save him.
The history books will treat Trimble well but it seems he must now recuperate in the British House of Lords and hand over his leadership and what is left of his wounded party to someone else.
The DUP and Sinn Féin have further entrenched their positions as the dominant voices in Northern Ireland politics but they were taught just a little humility, and that will please the British and Irish governments and those who feared a DUP/Sinn Féin whitewash.
The DUP emerged with nine seats when it was expecting to win 10. Sinn Féin won five seats when it expected to take six. Lady (Sylvia) Hermon is now the sole UUP voice in the House of Commons, but the SDLP has three seats when it was predicted, including here, that it might end up with only one, Eddie McGrady's in South Down.
Mark Durkan, the SDLP leader, with unionist support easily saw off the challenge of Mitchel McLaughlin and Sinn Féin's formidable electoral machine.
That was a remarkable achievement and he can be forgiven for hammering us pundits who got it wrong. Perhaps first-time fatherhood served him well but in this campaign Durkan was strong and relaxed, concentrated and witty without being verbose, as is sometimes his failing. This result stamped his authority on the party and demonstrated that the SDLP has a future when a couple of days ago there was a real danger it had none. For once its machine was well oiled.
Durkan won well in the end, by almost 6,000 votes, and would have taken the seat even without unionist assistance. It gives him time and space to further develop his party.
Equally remarkable was the victory of Dr Alasdair McDonnell fighting South Belfast for the eighth time. A couple of days ahead of the vote, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was dismissing McDonnell as a no-hoper but the good doctor came through the middle, between the favourite, the DUP candidate Jimmy Spratt, and Michael McGimpsey of the UUP.
"Tribal politics is not the only way forward in Northern Ireland," said McDonnell in his acceptance speech, making his point for centre-ground politics.
Sinn Féin had a very good election most everywhere but not in South Belfast. It seems voters there sent a message to Sinn Féin that they deplored the murder of Robert McCartney and perhaps weren't too impressed either with the allegations of widespread IRA criminality. Alex Maskey was the main spokesman for Sinn Féin as it defended its position after Robert McCartney's murder. In the Assembly elections he won 3,933 votes approximately; yesterday he won 2,882. Some of that may have been Sinn Féin supporters voting tactically for McDonnell but a significant portion probably was because of the McCartney factor.
Durkan also fought on a platform that a vote for the SDLP was not only a vote for his party but was putting pressure on republicans to fully embrace democracy.
The international story from yesterday's election is, of course, the defeat of Nobel laureate David Trimble. After almost 10 years as UUP leader, David Trimble was dignified in his speech after the result was declared, his voice only breaking when he thanked his wife, Daphne, and family. He would not say whether he intends to resign but his hope that the result would have a "silver lining" for his family may have been a hint that he will. He has little other option, it seems.
Acknowledging the DUP's achievement, Trimble put it to the Rev Ian Paisley and his party that with power comes responsibility. "I believe that the situation that Northern Ireland is now in is a much better one as a result of what we have done. I am proud of our record," Trimble said.
The DUP now rules the unionist roost at Westminster but it has embraced the power-sharing philosophy of the Belfast Agreement. For all the hard words, Paisley and Peter Robinson say they will serve in a Northern Executive and Assembly with Sinn Féin if the IRA truly and demonstrably does what Gerry Adams asked them to do - clear the stage.
The period ahead will determine whether the IRA will answer that call. If it feels it needs a political mandate to respond positively, then the continued increase in the Sinn Féin vote and representation has provided one.
One of the reasons for the virtual demise of the UUP at Westminster is that, previously, David Trimble accepted what he understood was the word of the IRA, that it would go away. It didn't but in gambling in his dealing with Sinn Féin he brought republicans further into the embrace of normal politics.
Some believe that republicans are engaging in a Machiavellian "long game" to achieve a united Ireland and have no real interest in seeing the Assembly restored, the argument being that the longer there is confusion and political discord here, the better are republican ambitions facilitated.
Gerry Adams has given assurance after assurance that this is not the case; that while republicans want a united Ireland that in the short term it believes devolution best assists that ambition.
Sinn Féin with five seats and the DUP with nine are in the political driving seat. They have made huge gains, but there is an odd inter-dependence here because if Sinn Féin and the DUP really want to be back in the Executive then Gerry Adams and the IRA must deliver and Ian Paisley must believe them.
