And with the PTA still in force, Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, a legal activist, argued in her newspaper column, it was a case of Tweedledee going but Tweedledum remaining.
Cynics will dismiss the vote as a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a pair of 40-something Celts in suits, with similar ideas about making the parliament's work more open, streamlined and generally fascinating.