After an assembly election in which it lost two seats and 11,000 votes, it was inevitable the SDLP would have to take a long, hard look at its future direction.
It is not as though this month's poll was a one-off. The party has seen a steady decline in its electoral fortunes since the heady days of the Good Friday Agreement and the first assembly election where it took 24 seats with 22 per cent of the vote.
On May 5 this year, the number of seats had dropped to 12 with 12 per cent of the vote.
It has been a harsh verdict on the party which was the chief architect of the agreement and the most forceful and consistent voice in favour of power-sharing.
It is also clear from the most recent poll that many nationalists are disenchanted by Stormont's performance and have punished both the SDLP and Sinn Féin, either by staying at home or voting for the far left People Before Profit.
However, Sinn Féin retains its electoral strength and will form a government with the DUP. The more pressing question has centred on what the SDLP would do - stay in the executive and risk further punishment from the electorate or move to opposition and hold the ruling parties to account.
The party will have noted the Ulster Unionists' swift decision to move into opposition and the generally favourable response this has received.
In many ways, following the same path would have caused much more heart-searching in the SDLP, a party closely wedded not just to the devolved structures but also the spirit of the agreement that laid the foundations for the transformation of our society from conflict to peace.
Yesterday, however, they took that step, walking away from government and into uncharted territory in terms of our political system.
The Good Friday Agreement did not envisage a formal opposition and the original premise, of having the main parties, unionist and nationalist, involved in a joint decision-making process, was sound and right for the times we were in.
But it is 18 years on and we have to allow for political structures to evolve.
The lack of an official opposition has meant that government has not been as accountable as it should be. Indeed, it has fallen to the local media to perform that important function.
Opposition from the SDLP and UUP may push the DUP and Sinn Féin to work in a more cohesive, transparent and effective way.
That would be a good thing in terms of how we are governed.
What we do know for sure is that the next assembly will be very different from what has gone before.
