DAVID TRIMBLE need not celebrate just yet. The Ulster Unionist leader was in self-congratulatory mood last week, as the London government conceded his demand for an enhanced role for the Northern Ireland Grand Committee at Westminster.
Alongside the recently established Select Committee, this further reform of Westminster procedures should go some way to meet wholly valid unionist objections to the "colonial" and undemocratic nature of Direct Rule.
Taken together with the less-than-fulsome operation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement by Mr Major's government, the unionists may feel they have created a more level playing field from which to approach any future negotiations.
But the UUP leader was surely premature in suggesting that - apart from the Order in Council system by which much of the North's legislation is enacted - they had "achieved all of our agenda".
They have not been "integrated" yet - a fact startlingly underlined by yesterday's Labour/Liberal Democrat joint press conference at which the two parties unveiled their final proposals for constitutional reform.
Few would quibble with Mr Robin Cook's assertion that this was an event of some historic significance - two parties, competitors in the forthcoming election, coming together on a platform of radical and comprehensive reform. And, in the changed atmosphere of the past week, an air of reality suddenly attended his forecast that this could amount to a programme for change "as important in its impact as any of the great Reform Parliaments of the last century".
Bit by bit New Labourites are beginning to believe that power is actually within their grasp. One imagines Shadow Cabinet staffers going about their tasks in offices bearing the injunction on every wall: "Do Not Be Complacent... Take Nothing For Granted."
But in the week after Wirral, the most cautious are allowing themselves to think the unthinkable that Mr Blair might not only win, but win big. And because the media establishment is pretty well unanimous in its expectation of a Blair government, so the sense of excitement grows at the realisation of what this might mean for Britain.
A FEW OF us will still doggedly insist that the Fat Lady isn't singing yet. The Tories have allocated some £40 million to their election war chest. The outcome will be decided by a couple of million voters in the key marginals. The government's intention is to scare the hell out of them between now and polling day.
But the sense persists that what might scare the punters most is the prospect of a fifth Tory term. And continuing cabinet warfare over Europe not to mention the ludicrous antics of Lord Tebbit and the foul rantings of Mr David Evans - can only reinforce the electorate's misgivings.
With friends like them, Mr Major is in sufficiently dire straits without the likes of Lord McAlpine and the disgraced lobbyist Ian Greer reopening the issue of sleaze, the personal greed of some Tory MPs and the whole question of party political funding and overseas donations.
For all the reservations about Labour's claim to power, there is potency in Mr Cook's argument that democracy cannot remain healthy if one party always stays in power: "The strongest case against a Tory fifth term is that it would see our institutions of government slip into the culture of a one-party state." And Mr Cook and Liberal Democrat Robert Maclennan yesterday served notice that, if Mr Blair wins on May 1st (or whenever), the British state will be reformed beyond recognition before the Tories have another tilt at power.
The Scots can expect a referendum as early as September on a tax-raising parliament in Edinburgh. The Welsh Assembly will follow. An electoral commission will be tasked to shape, within a year, the question for a referendum on electoral reform. The declared goal, which may not be met, is that the 1999 European elections will be fought on a system of proportional representation.
Also, the aristocracy will lose its right to sit in parliament by virtue of birth and the hereditary principle. A Freedom of Information Act will be enacted and the European Convention on Human Rights incorporated into British domestic law.
IF IT COMES to it, Labour will be opposed in all of this by a nationalistic Conservative Party determined to preserve the status quo. And in such circumstances the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists might find themselves once more in communion.
What is absolutely clear from yesterday's proceedings is that the unionists have not yet managed to engage with the debate about Britain's constitutional future, or make themselves part of it.
Northern Ireland didn't feature, simply wasn't mentioned clearly because, in the minds of those who hope shortly to form the government of the United Kingdom, it remains a place apart. The UUP may have reformed Westminster procedures, but they have not removed "the badge of difference".
The Framework Documents, like the IRA, never really went away. And the political negotiation will have to be conducted all over again!