Mark Durkan interview: The party has to renew itself in the face of Sinn Fein's growth or die, writes Mark Hennessy
Standing outside Hillsborough Castle in the rain on Saturday afternoon following a meeting with the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, Mr Mark Durkan's mood matched the weather.
With just 18 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the SDLP leader has few illusions about the task he faces now to rebuild a battered organisation.
"We know we face challenges. We need to renew our membership. We have to improve on the ground in the constituencies because that is the level where we lose out most.
"We knew that the peace process involved risks for us, John Hume knew that.
"We knew that if it worked it was going to be more competitive electorally for us. That is part of the risk that we take, we have to live with that. Now that we are in a much more competitive environment we just have to be more competitive ourselves."
In the past, he said, the SDLP had adopted "a pastoral role of looking out for the whole process" and understanding the difficulties facing other players.
"We are now entitled to look after our own agenda and set out our own much more, rather than spending our time being a walking, talking Irish Times editorial. Nobody is talking about being more awkward, or anything else. It is just that we are entitled to spend more time on our own agenda. Now it is not a selfish agenda. It is a very positive agenda.
"We don't want to be back in power because we want politicians to share the corridors of power. The institutions are not precious ornaments to be admired. They are tools to create change," he said. However, Mr Durkan has to do this without many of the party's best and brightest: Mr John Fee in South Armagh, Mr Joe Byrne in West Tyrone and Mr Danny O'Connor in East Antrim, among others.
"I think we face a very formidable machine in Sinn Féin. They have people and resources. Money is no object for them. That is not the case for ourselves."
In hindsight, the SDLP's targeting of the Democratic Unionist Party backfired, encouraging some unionists to vote for it and denying the SDLP small but vital transfers.
Sitting later in the Plough Inn across the road from Hillsborough Castle, Mr Durkan did not accept the criticism.
"I don't believe that we turned anybody towards the DUP.
"We said very clearly that the DUP wanted a result in this election which put them on top in unionism and put Sinn Féin on top within nationalism so that they could then declare the agreement a bust.
"That is what we were trying to warn people about. If people did not fully heed that warning, then we have to look at whether we sold that warning well enough."
In October, Mr Durkan railed against the Irish and British governments' decision to focus all of their attentions on the UUP and Sinn Féin, to the exclusion of the other parties.
Privately, the Sinn Féin president, Mr Adams, was mystified by the SDLP's tactic. "Why would they want to follow a course that emphasises their peripherality?" he told one observer.
However justified, Mr Durkan's complaints perplexed others, too. "Séamus Mallon wouldn't have done that. He would have turned up at Downing Street, or he would have kept his mouth shut," said another source.
Offering no apologies, Mr Durkan said: "I predicted that the dodgy deal would not work, and would not stick. And I was right. I was honest about that. I am not going to lie about anything." Unlike some, Mr Durkan does not believe that the DUP will be more accommodating now that it is the largest unionist party. "I have never believed the DUP were moderates-in-waiting.
"The kind of things that they have talked about as alternatives are simply specious and not workable, so we have real difficulties. And there is no point saying otherwise." Leading DUP figures, such as Mr Peter Robinson, do "have a real power instinct and they will certainly do everything they can to get power into their own hands in some terms.
"They also realise that they can't get power only in their own hands, that it will also go into other people's hands. But they are not going to come up with accommodation, partnership or anything else."
For now, the DUP, he believes, is prepared to let Sinn Féin "be the top dog in nationalism", as long as it is "the top dog in unionism", and in control of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
During the 1991/1992 Brooke-Mayhew talks "everybody was telling us that there were wonderful, pragmatic people in the DUP", he said. "We never saw them. Nobody ever, ever saw them."
Meanwhile, part of Sinn Féin's focus will shift to the Republic for next year's local and European elections. "Sinn Féin is given a lot of credit by voters there." Its attempt to portray itself in the Republic as an "anti-establishment, anti-corruption party" is "a bit hard to take", he said.
"It is a bit rich to hear Sinn Féin moralising against other parties and voters should think about that, maybe. There is the new clean image of Sinn Féin. It can't hide the fact of what they have done in the past.
"People give them a very big indulgence. I just sometimes think of Groucho Marx's observation: 'I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin'."