Here's a paradox. In the turmoil of the Westminster and local council results, the most powerful political grouping is neither elected nor political. It's the IRA army council. It, if you will pardon the phrase, is calling the shots on how or whether politics will prosper or collapse in Northern Ireland.
The focus last night was as much on what the IRA will do next as on the counts. It was also on Mr David Trimble's future, which is tied to what the IRA does next, and to a lesser extent on Mr John Hume's.
Last night the DUP and Sinn Fein continued on their march, but it won't be clear until later today how much collateral damage the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP have sustained. That's when we will know what pressures will fall on their leaders.
The UUP vote appears to be down around 6 per cent, the SDLP figure down 1 per cent. Reasonably good for the SDLP and Mr Hume, but because of the vagaries of the proportional representation system it is impossible to interpret how this will affect the overall number of UUP seats, currently at 185.
Mr Trimble's party has been taking hits in many of the North's 26 councils. Mr Peter Robinson of the DUP predicted that if Mr Trimble lost around 30 seats he would be in trouble. The final PR transfers might help the UUP, but at the moment the First Minister would seem in danger of losing that number or more.
Those threatened councillors are members of the Ulster Unionist Council, which meets on Saturday week to reinstate or sack Mr Trimble. If they go down, they could be so uncharitable as to take him with them.
Mr Trimble's advice yesterday to all Ulster Unionists was the same as it was on Sunday night: "Hold your nerve." He wants the flexibility, through his resignation ultimatum, to put further pressure on the IRA on the arms issue. Mr Trimble is to meet the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, today in London. In Gothenburg in Sweden at the end of the week the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will meet Mr Blair on the margins of the EU summit to try to devise some way out of what can be fairly described as a political crisis.
Sinn Fein appears on course to scale the 100-seat figure from its 74 four years ago, and the DUP will significantly improve its council representation, which stood at 91 in 1997. After this election the four main parties will all stand within a few percentage points of each other.
Some of that Sinn Fein/DUP gain will be at the expense of the smaller parties and Independents. Alliance, which lost the North Down Westminster seat to Lady Sylvia Hermon of the UUP, also appears to be in trouble, but again the final transfers will determine whether it can reach its 1997 total of 41 seats.
With about half of the 582 results in, the UUP and the DUP had roughly 75 seats each. This contrasts with 1997 when the DUP total of 91 seats was less than half the UUP total. Again, the PR system could dramatically alter the final picture. Sinn Fein's ambition to "green the west" of the Bann also continues apace. Last night it was making gains in Derry, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Armagh and south Down.
A stark example of that growth is in Fermanagh. Two years after the Enniskillen bombing of November 1987, Sinn Fein had only four seats on the council. By the last local election four years ago it had increased its seats by one. Last night it was confidently predicting it would win around nine. Dungannon was a hung unionist-nationalist council, but again last night it appeared it would turn nationalist with Sinn Fein in the driving seat.
Up to last night there was only a minor shift in the balance of power on Belfast City Council. The final results will establish whether Alliance will continue to hold that balance or whether Sinn Fein and the SDLP together will be so powerful that we will witness Sinn Fein having its first lord mayor of Northern Ireland's capital. There was an interesting moment on BBC television yesterday afternoon as the local results came in. Sinn Fein's Ms Bairbre de Brun, sitting in the same studio as Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, trotted out an old phrase that the Lagan Valley MP's implacable position was that he "did not want a Fenian about the place".
Presenter Noel Thompson asked Mr Donaldson was this the case. Mr Donaldson's line was that, whatever he thought about Ms de Brun, under the agreement she was entitled to be in the Executive, but only after IRA decommissioning.
The exchange didn't bring us any further practically or politically but it did challenge a rather tired Sinn Fein refrain. It also illustrated that, politically, the IRA is more powerful on ceasefire than not.
Unionists wouldn't read it like this, but they have handed the political future, and that of Mr Trimble, to the IRA.