CHAMPAGNE and the Tricolour are an unusual combination. But that's what greeted the victory of Gerry Adams at Belfast City Hall yesterday.
With the weather so hot the champagne should have been in an ice-bucket. However, nobody was thinking of niceties on the day that was in it. Besides, Mr Adams had told a radio interviewer he was going for a pint to celebrate. Old traditions die hard.
With flags and slogans City Hall was like a revolutionary commune.
One couldn't help recalling the old Bob Dylan anti-Vietnam War song, "Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones?"
The SDLP may have gone down from four seats to three but the results were not without comfort for the larger nationalist party. It increased its share of the vote to 24 per cent, the highest since its foundation in 1970 and up slightly on 23.5 percent in the last Westminster election in 1992.
In the new constituency of West Tyrone, the energetic Mr Joe Byrne was only 1,200 votes behind the winner, Mr William Thompson of the Ulster Unionist Party.
"We're down a sent but we're not beaten," a senior SDLP source said defiantly.
On the unionist side, Mr David Trimble has reason to feel happy with himself. His share of Westminster seats has increased from nine to 10, thanks to the win by the quiet, unassuming Mr Thompson in West Tyrone. The UUP gave the DUP candidate, the Rev William McCrea, a clear run in Mid Ulster and the main unionist party will take little pleasure in the sight of Mr Martin McGuinness's name with the letters MP after it.
At the same time, the contraction of the DUP from three to two parliamentary seats will not cause any sleepless nights for the UUP.
There will be some disappointment that Mr Reg Empey failed to unseat the DUP's Mr Peter Robinson, a project very close to the UUP's heart. However, yesterday's result means the UUP is that much closer to its ambition of a Single Voice for Ulster Unionism.
On the broader stage, Mr Trimble has lost the balance of power he held at Westminster. Unionist sources privately expressed some trepidation at the prospect of a Labour government with an unassailable majority. They also foresaw a rescue operation being mounted in the Republic for the SDLP. The last such mercy mission resulted in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which still sears the unionist soul. Where could the next one lead - joint authority?
At the same time, the UUP has more room to manoeuvre. In theory at least, there is a five-year gap until the next Westminster poll. The DUP, though still a strong voice, has suffered a serious setback. The UUP's Mr Alan McFarland, dismissed as being "too nice for politics", gave Mr Robert McCartney a run for his money in North Down. You could say David Trimble has had worse days.
One of the lessons of yesterday's result is that politicians from the Republic - whatever their understandable anxiety to assist constitutional parties - would be better not advising northern nationalists which way to vote.
However, it would be wrong to conclude that everyone who voted Sinn Fein was voting for the IRA. It was above all an angry vote, aroused by three factors.
The first was the events at Drumcree which still rankle bitterly with the nationalist community.
The second factor, which proved crucial in the Mid Ulster constituency, was Mr McCrea's decision to share a platform with the high-profile loyalist, Billy Wright. It is hard to imagine anything more calculated to arouse the ire and - outrage of even the most non-political nationalists.
McCrea Must Go became the order of the day and Mr McGuinness seemed to have the best chance of putting Willie out.
The third factor was that even many moderate nationalists accept Sinn Fein's analysis that the British government and particularly Mr Major were to blame for the collapse of the peace process. This week's vote was the harvest.
There was a strong element in the nationalist vote of seeking to help those who are perceived as doves in the republican movement. Whatever the sceptics might say, many nationalists believe Mr Adams is genuinely trying to persuade his more militant colleagues that politics is the best and the only way.
The voters have spoken, now it is up to the British government and the IRA. Should republican activists continue their activities, particularly in Britain, Mr Blair may well feel that he has to show he is no softie. Irate commuters snarled in traffic on Spaghetti Junction or punters whose Aintree weekend was spoiled by the Provisionals would probably cheer if the new Prime Minister opted for coercion instead of negotiation.
Continued IRA activity, with the ever-present possibility of a major atrocity, would allow Mr Blair to ignore Sinn Fein and its two new seats.
Realistically, the IRA is unlikely to desist unless it receives some signal from New Labour that a ceasefire would be reciprocated. Some observers believe Mr Blair will be in no great hurry to throw crumbs of comfort to the Provos and that, like Mr Major, he will listen very closely to the advice given to him by his intelligence services.
Thus, we have the British chicken on one side and the IRA egg on the other with the rest of us stuck somewhere in the middle.
Few people understand the eagerness of Dr Mo Mowlam to become Northern Ireland Secretary. She obviously has an appetite for seemingly intractable problems. The first is, how to restore the peace process without being seen to give way to terrorism. The second is, what to do about the marching season, Drumcree in particular. The third is, how to get Sinn Fein into talks without ensuring a walkout by the UUP.
All of these problems are interlinked. A credible IRA ceasefire would ease the tension surrounding the marching season and the talks. It should not be beyond the wit of diplomats, civil servants and politicians to come up eventually with a dignified formula on decommissioning that the UUP can live with, just as the main unionist party found it could live with Mr George Mitchell as chairman of the talks.
There has been much talk of a new dawn in Britain. Northern Ireland does not see too many new dawns but an awful lot of false ones. The question now between the British government and the republican movement is, who will blink first? As Drumcree III looms ever larger, someone had better blink soon.