If Gordon Brown does indeed call an election very soon, a groan of nervousness will waft out of Stormont. The next sound will be running feet hitting the floor - some have been limbering up for a while.
Any election will test vulnerable points: DUP rank-and-file unhappiness with powersharing, the weakness of Ulster Unionists and the SDLP, Sinn Féin's adjustment to the Dáil disappointment. But there is no questioning the determination of double and even triple jobbers to hang on to the multiple initials after their names.
Even in the most settled legislatures, the imperative to retain seats runs deeper than party loyalty, though personal vanity often coincides with the party's interests, and Northern politics is no different. One central oddity goes largely unremarked. In 21st century Stormont there are few takers for the argument that nobody should be both a member of the legislative Assembly and a Westminster MP, nor even that being a minister in Belfast obviously conflicts with hiking off to London. It occurred to some, but not all, not to stand again for council seats.
A total of 16 MLAs are MPs: six are also Stormont Ministers, the joint First and Deputy First Ministers among them. Of the main parties only Ulster Unionists are innocent of double-jobbing, thanks to the meltdown in the last Westminster election which left Lady Sylvia Hermon as their lone MP. Westminister's chief Northern significance today is crude number-crunching, the motor of party politics. Winning seats is all. Few in Stormont may relish an election but will buckle down, swatting any accusations that being part-timers short-changes voters by pointing to the unexpectedness of the election. If Brown decides against a November poll, they have to face the question next time with even less excuse.
For most, the likely effect of an election campaign at this point on concentration in the Assembly and working relations in the Executive is neither here nor there. Back in the last century, a Westminster election destroyed the first powersharing experiment by revealing how unionists had deserted prime minister Brian Faulkner. The majority of Stormont's present inhabitants may not bother to recall that. Ian Paisley has no disgruntled hordes to his right.
Even fewer are likely to reflect that when the unionist-dominated Stormont government unravelled in the face of civil rights demands and furious Paisley responses, it was the Westminster MPs who were considered the unionist B team. For the most part, they were wrong-footed and outmanoeuvred by the media skills of lone nationalist Gerry Fitt.
Today's Westminster crop of Northern Ireland MPs are very different. Yet for the past 10 years at least they have had as little relevance in the House of Commons as those long ago unionists.
A reduced Labour majority, even a hung parliament are distinctly possible outcomes of an election next month, though. The nine DUP MPs may be in a position to start flexing muscles. In theory of course, it matters to present-day unionists of all stripes that they can stand for election and take their seats beside other British MPs for Glasgow, Coventry, Plymouth etc. But the DUP are devolutionist to the core.
They loved routing David Trimble and shrinking his Westminster party on the stage he revered so much more than they did. It was pure power-play. With even less ideological interest Sinn Féin have enjoyed whittling away the SDLP's position.
Westminster makes sense for 21st century nationalists and republicans mainly as an election arena. SDLP leader Mark Durkan, MLA and MP, can argue that he nominated colleague Margaret Ritchie, not himself, to a Stormont ministry. As the most sensitive to charges of double-jobbing he must see the contradictions in trooping over to London with Alasdair McDonnell, away from the powersharing structures the SDLP helped to engineer.
Sinn Féin's five MPs no doubt feel their Stormont jobs do not suffer since they refuse to attend Westminster. Nor would they care that Scottish and Welsh assembly members are barred from sitting in two parliaments. But like the DUP, Sinn Féin are open to the charge of depriving voters of extra and full-time representatives, and depriving colleagues of jobs, despite the pride republicans have taken in "bringing on" young talent.
The man at the top sets a brazen example. Paisley is still an enthusiastic preacher, if at last faced with retirement as Moderator of Free Presbyterianism. He also combines the duties of First Minister with those of MP and MLA. If Stormont is not to be a toytown parliament its members must insist that no jobs are part-time.
After years of criticising English ministers for spending three days a week "governing" Northern Ireland, it is hard to credit that home-grown politicians can unblushingly contemplate their own form of absentee landlordism.