Sinners are one thing, Shinners another

Count Sketch: DUP candidates sometimes preface their victory speeches with passages from the Bible. So as the North emerged from the election counts yesterday, all eyes turned to the North's new biggest party to see what its chosen message might be, and who would read it.

Would it be an Old Testament Paisley, expounding on the need to smite your enemies? Or a New Testament Robinson, reading from the Book of Peter, and hinting at forgiveness? In the event, there were no readings, excepted attempted ones by analysts looking for nuances in the party's statements. And there were few clues in these either. In interview after interview, Peter Robinson stuck to the standard hymn sheet: "Sheep May Safely Graze", "I know that My Redeemer Liveth" etc. He didn't perform Dr Paisley's favourite - "Shinners May Not Safely be Negotiated with while the current DUP Leader Liveth" - but neither did he challenge that message.

On the the other hand, a potentially positive trend for the peace process is that Dr Paisley now seems to hate journalists even more than republicans.

After a campaign in which he grabbed them by the lapels and threatened to shove things down their gullets, he relented yesterday only to the extent of suggesting that one TV anchorman undergo "a baptism of humility". An idea that appeared to be taken up by Gerry Adams, in his victory speech at the King's Hall.

Perhaps sensing that Dr Paisley was in the humour for baptising people, the Sinn Féin leader asked to be born again, politically at least. Addressing personal remarks to his DUP counterpart, he said that Christian teaching seemed to be all about "dialogue, conversation, and dealing with sinners". And smiling, he added: "As a sinner, I offer myself on behalf of those I represent to be converted by Dr Paisley to his vision of the future." Sinners are one thing, of course. Shinners - a category not even mentioned in the Bible - are another. And as of last night, the veteran clergyman had not responded to the offer from the leader of what he had earlier termed "a bunch of renegade rebels". But hope springs eternal in Northern politics, and the Lazarus-like comeback by the Alliance Party was a reminder that miracles do happen.

After Thursday's trauma of seeing the DUP snatch a seat in West Belfast, Sinn Féin had sweet revenge yesterday when Philip McGuigan won one in Dr Paisley's backyard of North Antrim. The sight of tricolour-waving in Ballymoney was a sobering one for the DUP, not that they ever need sobering. But it might also have been another nudge for the party in the direction that led Trimble adviser Steven King to describe their current policies as those of the "UUP circa 1997".

Mr Trimble himself called the election result a "stalemate" and suggested a repeat poll might be necessary "in six months". In the meantime, the only certainty is that there will be talks, and lots of them. Weeks and weeks of talks.