Sinn Féin could hold the balance of power in a hung Commons Parliament if it formed a celtic alliance with Scots and Welsh nationalists as well as Labour republicans.
The latest word from Number 10 Downing Street and Leinster House is that Gordon Brown and Biffo Cowen are going to give Stormont one last push before shutting up shop on the Northern Assembly.
Forget all the huffing and puffing from Robbo's camp about wanting the right deal on policing – the DUP is shit scared of wee Jimmy Allister's Traditional Unionists.
Sinn Féin can pull a real flanker on the DUP by agreeing that its MPs will take their Commons seats.
With Shinners now supporting the peelers and propping up a partitionist parliament at Stormont, surely they have enough spin doctors to sell taking Westminster seats to the republican community.
Why does it always take a Presbyterian radical like me to instruct you Shinners on how to get into power?
Thankfully, you have already followed by advice on converting Sinn Féin from the lapdog apologists for a group of death squads into a modern day version of the old Irish Independence Party.
It was constitutional republicanism at its best until its guru, the Protestant nationalist John Turnly, was murdered by the UDA in 1980 in his Larne constituency.
If Turnly had lived, he would have replaced John Hume as the North's top democratic republican within a decade.
Barring a miracle, the Assembly is buggered. This will leave Northern republicans without an effective elected voice. With Stormont in chaos, this is even more reason why Sinn Féin MPs must take their seats.
The DUP is more interested in smashing the TUV and New Force than reaching a deal with the Shinners.
The Shinners got their political balls well and truly kicked in the South. Their plan to collapse Stormont in February, and then become the Assembly's top party in March's poll did not take account the DUP would push all its panic buttons.
The Tories rightly recognise there may not be enough New Force MPs elected in the North to guarantee Dandy Dave the keys to Downing Street.
Cameron is now busy courting the Liberal Democrats in the hope he can form a government in the increasingly likely hung parliament.
If the DUP messes up policing and justice in the North, there's no way Brown will form a government with any of Robbo's MPs.
Does Robbo seriously believe a Lib-Lab/DUP pact is a real runner? Forget a re-run of the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970s.
Labour needs the nationalists to form a government. Scottish and Welsh nationalists will do a deal to get more powers for their respective assemblies.
So Sinn Féin needs to be in the Commons itself to argue the case for the North. Irish republicans can no longer shout from Westminster's sidelines.
Sinn Féin have taken their seats in a British-run Stormont; their seats in a pro-Treaty Dáil, and their seat in a pro-Lisbon Treaty European Parliament – so what's stopping them in the English Commons?
With Sinn Féin now firmly occupying the crucial Catholic middle class ground which was once the SDLP's bastion, Shinner MPs must behave like true democrats.
Unlike the DUP, the Shinners do not need to look over their shoulders at political dissidents.
If Marty McGuinness can brand republican dissidents as traitors, he can outgun every Unionist by making his maiden speech from the floor of the Commons chamber in Irish.
