Last month in this column, David Adams predicted that both the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party would be all but obliterated in the May 5th Westminster elections.
Happily, I was proved partially wrong by what could be the beginnings of a revival by the SDLP. But considering the UUP's fate, not as wrong as I would have liked or nearly enough to cause me to rethink my other prediction. That was: with Sinn Féin and the DUP in pole positions within nationalism and unionism, we can expect little or no forward movement in the political process for the foreseeable future.
Those who cling hopefully to the notion that a strengthened DUP can do business with Sinn Féin ignore recent history and the harsh realities that have flowed from it. Not least, they misunderstand why unionist opinion has now swung so strongly behind the DUP.
With the Belfast Agreement, the unionist community was faced with the prospect of Sinn Féin holding executive office within a devolved assembly. Despite deep misgivings about a movement it regarded as irredeemably malevolent, for a time a slim majority was prepared to suspend judgment and take a chance on securing a political settlement and, thereby, lasting peace.
Sinn Féin failing to deliver on commitments and the IRA continuing with its criminal and paramilitary activity merely confirmed for unionists what they had always believed: that republicans just cannot be trusted. Consequently, the critical mass within that community virtually gave up on the Provisionals ever conforming to democratic norms and moved from being deeply sceptical about all-inclusive, power-sharing arrangements to being dead set against them.
Those claiming in recent days that David Trimble did not "do enough to sell the agreement to the unionist community" are well wide of the mark. They show scant understanding of the community they refer to and fall far short of giving due recognition to what Trimble did achieve.
Besides negotiating a better political and constitutional deal for unionism than many, including this writer, thought possible, it was he who managed to convince that slim majority within unionism to take a chance on an agreement that would involve members of the Provisional republican movement taking up ministerial positions in a Northern Ireland executive. No mean feat, given all they had suffered at the hands of the IRA.
At that stage, with the agreement under constant attack from right-wing unionists, no one could have sold it to the unionist community, but Trimble did manage to persuade them to put it to the test. Thanks primarily, but not exclusively, to republican bad faith, unionists have tested the agreement, found it wanting and set their face against it.
Last week, the unionist electorate voted in greater numbers than before for the DUP - not in order to secure better terms for a return to power-sharing, but because it believes that party is less likely to go into government with Sinn Féin than the Ulster Unionists. In effect, it has voted for direct rule in preference to a return to devolved government. The DUP is acutely aware of that fact.
It is also painfully conscious of the narrow squeak it had prior to last Christmas. Within days of having almost closed on a deal with Sinn Féin, the IRA carried out the Northern Bank robbery and, within a few weeks of that, republicans murdered Robert McCartney.
Senior members of the DUP must still shudder when imagining the position they would have found themselves in if they had reached agreement with Sinn Féin, only to be betrayed by the IRA so soon thereafter. Irrespective of attitudes within the broad unionist community, they will be determined not to leave themselves so exposed again.
It is difficult to imagine what republicans can now offer in terms of substance, clarity and guarantees that would tempt the DUP into agreeing to share power with them. And more difficult still to imagine what it will now take for the unionist electorate to endorse such an agreement.
It is a situation for which the Provisional movement has only itself to blame. For years they did everything they could to ensure that someone else always took the blame for the political instability they deliberately brought about. All the while, concentrating their energies on increasing their electoral strength in both parts of the island by playing the role of thwarted peacemakers who invariably fall victim to the malevolent machinations of others. Now that the two governments have stopped pandering to their every whim, they realise the game is up and their tactics are threatening to be counter-productive.
It seems they might be ready, at last, to make a deal and stick to it. Unfortunately for them and the rest of us, after all that has happened there is no longer a large enough section of unionism prepared to take a gamble on republicans living up to their commitments.
It is for republicans alone to change that.