The Shinners and Stoops should merge to form a single Northern nationalist party.
Win or lose, Sinn Féin's Marty McGuinness is certainly the main talking point of this month's Southern Presidential poll.
His Aras result will overshadow the race to become the new SDLP leader. No matter who succeeds wee Maggie Ritchie as Stoop supremo, he will have to merge the SDLP with someone to ensure the party's long-term survival.
It's just a pity Ballymena SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan lost his Assembly seat this year as he could have been a worthy champion for nationalist unity.
Mind you, when he did propose the idea, he must have thought he'd fallen into a political hell given the nonsensical reaction from the then SDLP head buck cats when they suspended him.
While Sinn Féin still contains a lot of people who were in the 'RA at some point, the number of 'draft dodgers' emerging in the republican movement is steadily rising.
These are people who have begun their republican activity purely in Sinn Féin without previously serving an apprenticeship in the Provos.
With McGuinness and Gerry Adams well on their way to becoming Provo pensioners, a new Sinn Féin leadership must take over which has no links to the IRA wing of the republican family.
Sinn Féin has achieved its primary goal of becoming the top nationalist party in the North. But the brig crown is to defeat a heavily split and apathetic Unionist family into becoming the biggest party at Stormont.
While the SDLP lingers on, the Stoops will snatch enough seats to prevent this happening. The answer is simple – combine the SDLP and Sinn Féin and re-create the vision of the former Irish Nationalist Party at Stormont.
Sinn Féin has become the lead nationalist party, not by the number of police officers, soldiers, Unionists and Protestants the IRA murdered, but because the Shinners have nicked the middle class Catholic turf normally held by the Stoops.
Believe them or not, in reality, the Shinners have successfully rebranded themselves as a respectable middle class, moderate nationalist movement. So why do we need an SDLP?
Maybe Sinn Féin's military wing has spilt too much Irish blood for the SDLP to merge with the republican movement.
In that case, should the SDLP merge with one of the established Southern parties – the trendy socialists of Irish Labour, the Fine Gael Blueshirts, or rescue Fianna Fáil from complete meltdown?
If McGuinness' past prevents him from becoming President, then he should concentrate on his role as a Westminster MP and persuade Sinn Féin to take its Commons seats rather than returning to his job as deputy First Minister in the Assembly.
The temporary post holder – John O'Dowd from Upper Bann – is a republican Unionists can do business with.
What would be so wrong with a new Irish Nationalist Party led by O'Dowd with the SDLP's Big Al McDonnell or Patsy McGlone as his deputy?
Whatever you Stoop delegates do, DON'T put in Alex Attwood or Conall McDevitt as your next boss.
The latter two are capable constituency MLAs, but don't have the political balls to lead the Stoops into a merger with the Shinners.
If the nationalist and republican families had listened to Dekki O'Loan when he urged unity, the INP would be running Stormont and expertly poised for both a coalition role in the Dáil with Marty on his way to the Aras.
Maybe some day nationalists will see sense. Just ask Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond!
