In Northern Ireland, what was previously unthinkable has happened. Tony Blair has shaken hands with Gerry Adams. David Trimble has brought in a majority of Unionists behind the Good Friday peace deal. The Republic has amended its territorial claim to Northern Ireland. There is to be a new assembly. In this era of new hope, Mark Grey assesses the choices and temptations facing the Unionist community.

Now as the euphoric glow of a decision well made fades, people can apparently await the dawning of a permanently rosy future, ushered in on a promised wave of White House and Treasury investment.

To many in Britain, Ireland and the wider world, Unionists – viewed in certain quarters as close cousins to the Afrikaaners, the pied-noir of Algeria, or even the Ku Klux Klan (shame on you, Ms Short) – appear as an unsavoury lot whose position is untenable. Patience with their intransigence, already worn thin, will completely disappear if they are unable to at least semi-enthusiastically embrace and make work a settlement that places the political destiny of Northern Ireland in the hands of the people of the province, ensuring that they will be the arbiters of its constitutional position.

The Republic of Ireland, as expected, has amended its territorial claim to Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein has accepted the legitimacy of a 'partitionist' northern assembly. Effectively, Republicanism has settled for much less than 'Ireland – a nation once again', yet a significant Unionist element continues to drag its feet or dig in its heels, depending on whether it is designated 'soft' or 'hard' No.

In a place where Protestant noses, first trained on the scent of Lundy 300 years ago, are constantly sniffing the wind for 'sell-outs', an arrangement cobbled together by men who could be conceived to have sold out Socialism, Republicanism and Unionism (Blair, Adams and Trimble respectively), was never going to get the glossy welcome it was afforded in other parts of the world. Rather, the hard Nos are going to worry the deal to the bitter end, like relentless dogs after an injured sheep.

More understandably, to accept as an integral part of the solution people who have caused pain is difficult. 'Reconciliation, peace, prosperity', lectured Tony Blair, not about the future of Northern Ireland, but to protesters against Emperor Akihito's recent state visit to the UK – yet those who suffered at the hands of the Japanese in the last war are peeved and sore that the emperor was given a garter – a redundant piece of underwear, for heaven's sake. God knows how they would have reacted had he been offered more when the pain was fresher and more raw.

So people have trouble accepting Gerry Adams in a Northern Ireland administration, even though he is eminently qualified for a post in a ministry with a destructive brief. Who knows? Perhaps when his term of service is completed, he could be elevated to the Upper House as Lord Adams of Semtex – anything seems possible to Unionists at the moment. And it is hard to see as a human being someone on whom you reflexively transpose horns, cloven feet and a pointed tail.

Tony Blair, after the fury he caused in Unionist ranks by shaking Gerry Adams' hand, may self-righteously have said that you treat all people like human beings, but even he sang a different tune when he demonized Saddam Hussein. Now that it's mentioned, pushed to it, some Unionists would sooner see Saddam in Stormont than Adams; the folk wisdom concerning the Devil you know cuts no ice with the real Ulster hard-heads.

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