“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,” sang Leonard Cohen. Nigel Dodds’s loss of a seat that has never in its history elected a non-unionist, and in fact was formally represented by Edward Carson, is a devastating result for the party after what has been an unpleasant two years for it.

As its Leader in the House of Commons, Dodds had effectively been leader of the party as a whole, with Arlene Foster redundant while the Assembly sat empty.

Such a seismic shaking into waking reality, for unionism, is long due. The greatest threat to the union, as things stand, is unionists.

The currently dominating strand of unionism is Paisleyism, which is based upon ‘not an inch,’ ‘No Surrender!’ and ‘this will shall maintain’. In order for such an ideology to survive, people have to be afraid. Specifically, afraid of republicans who will huff and puff and blow the house down – a house that will be a cold house in future…

Dodds ran his campaign against Sinn Féin challenger John Finucane along such lines, perhaps best captured with a rallying event at the Ulster Hall.

This has served the DUP well, to an extent, up till now. But there are problems on the horizon. Their constituents are not being genuinely represented, in and of themselves, as a result of which those areas are suffering and people are leaving – and these demographic changes are not in unionism’s favour.

Sinn Féin also have problems which they will need to address. For the third election this year they have seen their vote share drop. The BBC suggested a matter of equivalence and that both parties suffered “bruising defeats.” However, electoral mathematics overshadowed by the grand symbolism of the victory in North Belfast, as well as the fact that unionism has lost its majority of the Northern Irish seats at Westminster, just in the un-assembled Assembly in 2017.

For now the party can celebrate. The biggest worry for Sinn Féin will be whether they curb or reverse that trend before the general election in the Republic next year, which the party hopes will be its biggest prize.

If unionists intend for the union to survive, particularly in any meaningful way, they must start making positive arguments for it rather than alluding to threats of cultural whitewash, or economic ruin. They should also start making an earnest case to nationalists.

An effect of Boris Johnson’s betrayal of the DUP, members of the party have begun retreating from their hardline stance on Brexit, of which Dodds was a key proponent. While they reconsider their position on the issue, they should also take the time to reconsider the referendum campaign.

They have many lessons to learn from Remain campaign which emphasised the harm that would be done to the economy by leaving the EU, rather than making any forceful positive argument of the UK’s power in the EU and of its cultural position within the continent.

The loss of Dodds’s seat has shaken the DUP and acted as a vindication of those voices within unionism that had encouraged greater reflection and self-awareness. Dodds will likely return soon enough, perhaps as an MLA, taking over from a lower-profile backbencher. But his ideas and his style will undergo further analysis.

The party lost North Belfast, but managed to hold onto East Belfast where Alliance leader Naomi Long was campaigning for a repeat over her 2010 coup over then MP and party leader Peter Robinson. It is down to the mild-mannered temperament of the East Belfast incumbent that there was no repeat of the 2010 result, despite an Alliance surge in other areas. If the DUP wish to survive, and moreso if they wish the union to survive, they will have to become a lot less like Dodds and a lot more like Robinson.

It is time to lay Ian Paisley’s legacy to rest and hand over to a new generation of leaders once and for all. This was a bad election for unionists, but could be the start of a brighter future.