Trimble faces pressure to bow out after UUP routed

THE political career of Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his efforts to bring peace to the North, lay in ruins last night after he lost his Upper Bann seat in the Westminster elections.

In addition, his party went into freefall after retaining just one of the five seats they held prior to polling day. Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party were the big winners, gaining three seats to increase their tally to nine half of the available seats with Mr Trimble their most notable scalp.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan breathed a heavy sigh of relief after fending off the challenge of Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin to retain his seat in Foyle. Both the DUP and UUP said some of their supporters in Mr Durkan's constituency had voted tactically for him to ensure Sinn Féin did not win there.

In addition, the SDLP's overall tally of three seats remained unchanged, despite predictions that the party would slide badly.

However, Sinn Féin cemented its position as the leading nationalist party in the North by gaining a seat to increase its tally to five.

The results underscored the shift by both unionist and nationalist communities towards more extreme politics in the North.

The immediate question raised by this was the future of the peace process. DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson, who retained his seat in East Belfast, immediately began playing hardball last night. Declaring the Good Friday Agreement "dead", he urged the SDLP to sign up to a voluntary coalition to establish an executive at Stormont, saying Sinn Féin would never end their "double life."

Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday appointed former Commons leader Peter Hain as the new Northern Ireland Secretary of State. The new ministerial team at the Northern Ireland Office will be in place early next week.

It is expected the office will immediately begin to sound out both the DUP and Sinn Féin on a resumption of the talks that ended acrimoniously in December over issues of IRA criminality and decommissioning.

The IRA is expected to issue a statement addressing both issues in the coming weeks that could clear the way for the talks to resume.

But the big story last night was Mr Trimble's defeat by more than 5,000 votes to the DUP's David Simpson.

He had held the seat in Upper Bann since winning a by-election in 1990. After being elected party leader, he managed to overcome internal tensions and win the UUP's support for the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.

Later that year, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with the then SDLP leader John Hume. Mr Trimble was subsequently appointed First Minister when the Assembly got up and running.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, he said: "like John Bunyan's Pilgrim, we politicians have been through the Slough of Despond I can certainly recall passing many times through the Valley of Humiliation nevertheless, like one of Beckett's characters, 'I will go on, because I must go on'."

However, it looks doubtful that his political career has anywhere left to go.