No way to soften impact of Paisley's defiant triumph

`Paisley is our leader, we shall not be moved." The chorus of faith and intent echoed around the King's Hall counting centre. The Big Man had triumphed once again. Seldom magnanimous in victory, the DUP leader scorned those who had foretold his fall. Sixty per cent of unionists had voted for the anti-agreement candidates. Mr Blair and his ministers had placed their reliance on the people. Let them then submit the Good Friday accord to a second referendum if they dared.

The victory rant may have been entirely predictable. But neutral observers could hardly deny he would feel well entitled to it. For Dr Paisley had once again confounded his opponents. The advancing years and rumours about his health - coupled with the reasonable enough expectation that John Hume might this time top the poll - had encouraged hopes that the Paisley vote-winning magic might finally be on the wane.

Not a bit of it. With barely a 1 per cent drop on his performance of five years ago, Dr Paisley squeezed ahead of Mr Hume to claim another personal victory, which will surely have an impact on the agreement and on the negotiations now set to take place ahead of the June 30th devolution deadline.

Ulster Unionists and Progressive Unionists will have hated every bitter word. But for all their best "spin", they were hard pressed last night to dispute Dr Paisley's basic thesis - that his result confirmed a significant shift in unionist opinion against the agreement (or, at any rate, against the perceived direction of the process) since last year's referendum and Assembly elections.

There was palpable relief in Glengall Street, and in London and Dublin, as it became clear that Mr Jim Nicholson would retain his seat.

This was the good news of the day. But it was only to be adjudged good in so far as things might actually have been a great deal worse.

By any objective criteria, this was a terrible result for the Ulster Unionist Party, claiming its lowest ever share of the popular vote, and only just avoiding an ignominious fourth place behind Sinn Fein on the first-preference count. A margin of just 0.3 per cent over Sinn Fein hardly accords with the expectations of a party which still considers itself the principal force in Northern Ireland.

Last June's Assembly contest saw the UUP slip from first to second place. Yesterday, it almost came fourth. And any leadership which imagines its party members and elected representatives will not draw uncomfortable conclusions from such an emerging pattern is surely deluding itself.

Mr Nicholson himself, by the by, may well take some personal satisfaction from his performance, achieved - as it often appeared during this campaign - despite his party's best efforts. Many unionists were simply aghast to discover that the party leader, Mr Trimble, had planned visits to America, Canada and Israel during the final stages of a campaign which threatened to impinge so directly on his own leadership.

On RTE last night, Mr Ken Maginnis was giving full and free expression to the fury felt by many UUP supporters at Mr John Taylor's "treacherous and self-righteous" refusal to endorse the party's candidate because of his admission of an extramarital affair.

And other arguments were being brought into play to assert that, on balance, this was really a rather good result for the Ulster Unionists. Some UUP voters, it was claimed, had given Dr Paisley their first preference in order to stop Mr Hume claiming the number one spot. The European election had always been different, for whatever reason, and was therefore not truly representative.

And anyway, the pro-agreement parties between them were still commanding a "70/30" margin over the antis. Indeed, according to one unionist spokesman, Dr Paisley's could not all be considered anti-agreement votes, since so many then transferred directly to the pro-agreement Mr Nicholson.

A number of contrary arguments, of course, also suggest themselves.

Mr Nicholson's supporters ran a seemingly effective campaign, telling voters to back their man to stop Sinn Fein taking the third seat.

Despite the party divisions, many will have seen the simple wisdom of that. Moreover, Mr Nicholson was the candidate of a deeply divided party, and must have claimed the support of anti-agreement Ulster Unionists who could never bring themselves to back Dr Paisley and who, on the clear evidence of yesterday's result, never rated Mr Bob McCartney as a serious contender. On that basis it is at least possible to argue that the actual margin between anti- and pro-agreement unionists may be greater than 60/40.

At the very least, it may be said that yesterday's result hardly produced a unionist endorsement of the North's "new politics". And the very best the two governments may conclude - if only because it could have been significantly worse - is that the outcome has not changed the fundamentals of the crisis in the peace process which Mr Tony Blair has unilaterally decided must be resolved by June 30th. That, of course, will be of dubious comfort if the outer limits of the Ulster Unionist position had already been set before anybody went to the polls last Thursday. And it is beginning to look as if they might have been.

Mr Blair is expected to begin a fresh pitch for UUP hearts and minds in a speech in Belfast later today. And there is no doubt he would still like to have the d'Hondt mechanism for the nomination of ministers-designate in the proposed executive triggered this week. In his recent Belfast Telegraph article, Mr Trimble appeared to signal he might be disposed to do so. The evidence from last Friday's statement by his party officers is that they are not insisting that the nomination of ministers be conflated with a prior agreement as to how the decommissioning issue is to be dealt with.

But on the back of Sinn Fein's remarkable achievement yesterday, no serious players in London or Dublin seem to have any expectation that the IRA will be rushing to oblige - and certainly not by June 30th.

We are presumably then about to discover just how serious Mr Blair is: how "absolute" is his deadline; how he proposes it be met; and against whom he proposes to direct sanctions if it is not.