Mr David Trimble has lost his pro-agreement unionist majority at Stormont. And, for once, Mr Martin McGuinness and the Rev Ian Paisley appear at one: the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr John Reid, should proceed to call fresh Assembly elections and let the people decide.
They have a compelling case. At this writing, however, it is one which the Ulster Unionist leader and Dr Reid seem determined to disregard.
A defiant Mr Trimble yesterday insisted that the narrow failure of his attempt to secure re-election as First Minister was not the end of the matter. His party colleagues, Mr Peter Weir and Mrs Pauline Armitage, had "behaved dishonourably", he said. Overnight, efforts were continuing to persuade the Alliance Party to come to the rescue by redesignating themselves as "unionists" for the purpose of overturning yesterday's result.
They might do so - and it might well work. The British government is clearly hoping that the new Alliance leader, Mr David Ford, and his colleagues will see it as their duty to do everything possible to keep the process afloat. Knowing his duty, likewise, their former leader, now Assembly Presiding Officer Lord Alderdice, will presumably be keeping an open door to facilitate any necessary recall of the Assembly before the expiry of tonight's midnight deadline.
At that point, if all else fails, Dr Reid will likely impose another 24-hour suspension of the agreement in order to buy further time for the redesignation debate, or, alternatively, to consider any rule changes which might bring about a reversal of yesterday's decision and avoid any precipitate encounter with the electorate.
The Democratic Unionists are ready to fight any redesignation ruse in the courts. Should Alliance prove disobliging, and force Dr Reid into amending legislation, Dr Paisley's party might well find themselves joined there by Sinn FΘin. For, while the Ulster Unionist/Alliance negotiations continued, one option being canvassed was for Dr Reid to amend the Northern Ireland Act to lower the threshold for the election of First and Deputy First Ministers from the present "majority" of unionists and nationalists to a weighted majority, or a simply more manageable 40 per cent.
It will not be lost on Sinn FΘin that the intended beneficiaries of such a change (the pro-agreement unionists) could on a future occasion deploy the same rule to prevent Sinn FΘin assuming the post of Deputy First Minister, even following an election where the republican party had overtaken the SDLP and gained the larger share of "nationalist" seats.
Dr Reid might prefer not to go down that path. He would also seem to have lost the option of changing the procedures to permit Mr Trimble - like Mr SΘamus Mallon before him - to simply withdraw his resignation. Even at Stormont they could hardly declare "no vacancy" after having held an election to fill it.
In addition, there is always the risk that any reopening of the rules to help one party out of a particular difficulty could suggest opportunity for others to improve their position, or deal with problems which had previously arisen and might do so again. Sinn FΘin, for example, might request that any amending legislation to be put before the Commons should address the matter of Mr Trimble's previous bar on its participation in the North/South Ministerial Council.
No, Dr Reid will reason, better by far to have Alliance change their political label for the day and, presumably, return to their own brand of non-tribal politics immediately thereafter. And for all their disavowals earlier this week, reports last night suggested that they might be preparing to do so in return for an assurance that the rules would eventually be reconfigured to allow future election to the top posts for candidates commanding a majority of unionists and nationalists and "others" .
That longer-term solution, however, would seem to suffer the same deficiency as the proposed short-term expedient. The fact is that Alliance members belong with the "others" and are emphatically not unionists.
Some of Mr Trimble's supporters seem unfazed by this. They argue that Messrs Weir and Armitage have flouted the will of a clear majority of the UUP's executive and see no reason why they should be allowed to occupy the "high moral ground" in this quarrel. They point, too, to the DUP's assumption of ministerial posts as evidence that that party really has no interest in bringing down the institutions of government and reckon that any "moral outrage" provoked by redesignation moves will be quickly forgotten.
They may be proved right. Perhaps, indeed, there is no moral ground here. Maybe "what works" is the only thing which counts. But to whose benefit? And to what ultimate end? The Belfast Agreement is rooted in the principle of dual consent of the unionist and nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. As of yesterday, on the floor of the elected Assembly, the consent of the unionist majority was formally withdrawn.
And unionists may increasingly question the implications for the consent principle if circumstances are contrived to maintain the power-sharing Executive with Mr Trimble's Unionists but minority shareholders. The risk for Mr Trimble is that they may also conclude with Dr Paisley that fresh elections would be the democratic alternative.