Martin and Arlene need to decide what they are going to do under the bushel. With 360,000 votes combined and a demand for selfies everywhere they go, it is no mean task.
The mandate they received gives them the remit to do more or less what they want for the next five years. As Martin so succinctly put it: 'we are in control'. So it is in their gift to come out from under the bushel and let their light shine out for a time.
They shouldn't be too irked or distracted by the critics. The place in which they find themselves is the inevitable stage of a journey that began a good many years ago. The naysayers can say it has taken too long, that it has been tiresome and tedious, that it has been unduly bitter and convoluted and it hasn't delivered what it promised. All of which is true - but incomplete and stingy. In any sketching of the journey from where we were to where we have to go, this is one of the necessary pit stops.
On the surface, it is only a short step and a few seats away from the last mandate but in the realm of psychology and expectation it is a different universe. It is akin to the moment when the duellists have walked in different directions, turned and fired their pistols and are realising that both are still alive and standing. What do they do now?
The next few years will see a heavy concentration on the economy, jobs and good governance. The two party executive will be out to prove that they can do better this time round. The lack of money and oppositional criticism in an atmosphere of public scepticism may even goad the parties into quicker and more difficult decisions. That is likely to give rise to the impression that the constitutional issue is going to lie dormant or that it has lost its impact. And that would be a foolish impression.
Arlene's 200,000 votes didn't come from a belief in the excellence of DUP governance. It was circling the wagons again to keep McGuinness, Sinn Féin and Irish unity at bay. It was a vote that had one eye on the number of seats and the other eye on the census figures. It was confirmation of the continuing failure of unionists to engage with the rest of the Irish people. Arlene's 38 seats is a mighty victory for now but in the long run it is not necessarily in the best interests of unionism.
For a time it will delay or dampen the debates that are the next necessary stage in the journey. Conversations about convergence of the public services on this small island; the convergence of health, energy, travel, training and infrastructure. Conversations about being British in Ireland and Irish in the United Kingdom, implications of a majority becoming a minority and vice versa.
It is very hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't want to talk back and there is a growing suspicion among nationalists that Arlene closes down uncomfortable conversations with a snarl. She is in danger of being seen as a wolf in woman's clothing.
Which leaves Martin in an invidious position. He has to juggle the strong opinions and feelings of his own voters, while at the same time wooing Arlene and her constituents. She has already snarled him down in public on a few occasions and it wasn't a pretty sight to observe the limp response. Martin has identified himself so strongly with the present institutions that he sometimes gives the impression that his own ego has become embroiled. That is dealing aces to your opponent in a card game because it engages the ego in defending the institution rather than the purpose for which the institution was invented.
It would be unproductive to engage in a snarling contest so the only strategy that makes sense is to initiate and persist in having the hard conversations about the future while consistently challenging Arlene to engage. The tone needs to be quiet but authoritative. It might take time but the expectation and the evidence is that there are enough good men and women within unionism who know an admit the propensity of their people for self harm and who have the political foresight to know that the time has come to have those conversations.
