Well, that's the yawn-a-day campaign over – tedious but instructive. Of the four party leaders David Trimble, amazingly, had the best campaign. When the UUP man's back is up against a wall he becomes strangely forceful, convincing and almost human. Gerry Adams was as usual good-humoured and presidential. If he ever learns to stop massaging his hands on-camera and saying "First of all", he'll be unmatchable.
Early in the campaign Mark Durkan's foot got stuck on the verbal accelerator, so that people didn't so much listen to him as try to avoid being run over.
As for Ian Paisley – 'O what a fall was there'. When his studio debate chair was filled by underlings, it looked bad. When he appeared on camera in person, he looked terrible.
Equally instructive was the kind of outside help parties here attracted. Beauties like Andrew Hunter, who crossed the Irish Sea to offer his moth-eaten carcass as a DUP candidate. Lib Dem chief Charles Kennedy, over to hold the hand – or was he feeling the pulse? – of an ailing Alliance. The Greens had a man from Scotland and Sinn Féin had several southern TDs up to add pizzazz on the doorstep.
Top draw, though, was the SDLP. They got Fine Gael advisers, they got Fianna Fail advisers, they got PD advisers, they got Pat Rabbitte Labour Party advisers, they got Tony Blair Labour Party advisers. They even got Brian Kennedy, who urged everyone to "put the ballot in the box" – helpful advice, I expect, for those voters who had been planning to put it somewhere else.
And what now? Well, the UUP will do better than predicted. Opera-lover and street-fighter, man of intellect and man of action, the Cunningham House contender has sent a shiver of delight through unionist drawing-rooms.
Who would ever have thought the Garvaghy Road prancer had so much guts in him?
The DUP insist that legions of former UUP supporters have flocked to their banner but I think not. Distaste for the Big Man runs deep in Ulster Unionist circles.
He may be a good laugh on Give My Head Peace; but the real thing, roaring into a microphone that God is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him and unionism – oh dear. All right for a crowd of clod-hoppers in a tent around Ballymena, but not in the more refined environs of Stormont. Strong as their distrust of equality-for-taigs talk may be, it's not as strong as their distaste for Paisley's dung-on-the-boots yahooery. No, David Trimble's post-election headache will come from the UUP enemy behind him, not the DUP enemy in front.
But supposing the worst happened – the DUP passed out the UUP, became the official voice of unionism. For months we've been assured that this would result in political stalemate, especially if Sinn Féin topped the nationalist poll, and that we'd be in for a period of direct rule that could last months, maybe years.
Codswallop to the power of ten.
Sinn Féin have not come all this way – through so many physical and political dangers – to allow such a vital bridge-head to be washed away. They want an assembly and an executive – and they will have it.
As for Peter Robinson, after all those weary years enduring the deafening roars and flying spittle of his master – Crown Prince Peter will be wild to mount the first minister throne. The words 'rat' and 'drainpipe' and 'up' come to mind.
The truth is, our politicians like exercising local power. It's like a drug, and over the past five years all the major parties have ingested some – UUP, SDLP, Sinn Féin, DUP. Nationalists won't want Westminster to step in and take away what makes them feel so good – nor will unionists.
So even if the unionist electorate went mad yesterday and elected the DUP to be their voice, fear not. By Easter at the latest, the Peters and the Nigels and the Gregories, who insisted during the campaign that they would never share power with Sinn Féin – they'll put their little heads together and
come up with a formula that will allow them to be true to their word while at the same time sitting down in cabinet to work with Sinn Féin and the rest. They'll do it, given the chance, because even DUP top men must have their fix.
But that scenario – the DUP wrestling with their conscience and winning – is, as they say, strictly hypothetical.
Because the DUP will not speak for most unionists. For better or worse that poor deformed creature known as the UUP will.
Anyway, goodbye tedium, hello fun. It's count time.
