Saturday was a bad day for the Belfast Agreement, but it could have been so much worse, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
A stark lesson emerged from Saturday's meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council: don't play poker with David Trimble. With a poor hand, almost bereft of friends, and as close to folding as he has ever been, he stole the pot, although he had to share some of his winnings with Jeffrey Donaldson.
This cat, as Mr Trimble himself predicted last week, has more than nine lives. Mr Donaldson could have nailed him on Saturday, but at the last minute he chose not to. Mr Donaldson said he was happy that the party was unifying around hardened policy but, had he been more adventurous, the leadership could have been his. The British and Irish governments are annoyed with Mr Trimble. The SDLP and Sinn Féin say they are furious. Saturday was a bad day for the Belfast Agreement, but it could have been worse. Mr Gerry Adams spoke of Ulster Unionists operating to a "wreckers' charter". But, as an aside, he offered a remarkably benign and astute analysis of Saturday. In 10 years' time, he said, it won't merit more than a paragraph in the history books.
If the main pro-agreement protagonists play to the script, then he will be proved right and the agreement will continue to push forward. But there are dangers.
The sceptical wing of unionism forced Mr Trimble onto much of its territory at the council. Adopting the so-called Daphne Principle - named after his wife - Mr Trimble, as at previous difficult council gatherings, did what he had to do to scrape through.
He committed himself and his party to a motion whose key element is unachievable by the deadline of January 18th. It sounds like crazy politics, but Mr Trimble felt there was no alternative. He was putting party before country.
"What else could he do?" said one of his frustrated supporters. "And we'll take no lip from Gerry Adams. If it wasn't for Colombia and Castlereagh Jeffrey wouldn't have had this chance." So, Ulster Unionist ministers will pull out of the Executive by January 18th if - and here the language of Mr Trimble's section of the motion is interestingly woolly - the IRA has not demonstrated by then that "a real and genuine transition (to non-violence and democracy) is proceeding to a conclusion".
That sort of ambiguous language - "proceeding to a conclusion" - denotes the possibility of some wriggle-room, although at the press conference on Saturday Mr Trimble said he wanted to see the IRA fully disarm and fully disband by the deadline. Certainly, Mr Donaldson is in no doubt about what is required from the IRA.
The IRA could do a lot more to steady the peace process but, as everyone on the Ulster Unionist Council knows, it won't totally disband and disarm by January 18th.
Mr Trimble achieved some moderation of paragraph three of Mr Donaldson's initial long motion. Mr Donaldson wanted the party to immediately withdraw from the North-South Ministerial Council. Mr Trimble was opposed to this idea but in the end the best he could do was agree not to have his ministers participate with Sinn Féin ministers in the NSMC.
Mr Donaldson's reference to policing was incorporated into the composite motion, and could cause trouble ahead. He wants the British government to set aside the 50/50 Catholic/Protestant PSNI recruitment policy, and threatens that the party will pull out of the Policing Board if there are any more "unnecessary" or "unreasonable" changes to the policing legislation to facilitate Sinn Féin.
But the British government at the Weston Park talks committed itself to making some changes to the legislation. It insists that the UUP is fully aware of these changes, that they are not being implemented to satisfy Sinn Féin, and that therefore these changes should not annoy the UUP. But will that be Mr Donaldson's view? As for ditching the 50/50 recruitment system, the British and Irish governments are agreed that this is pie in the sky, particularly when the big prize of enticing Sinn Féin onto the board appears attainable.
So why did Mr Trimble sign up to proposals, most of which can't or won't happen? That's easy: the election and his political survival. The benefit of Saturday for the party is that while Ulster Unionists will almost certainly pull out of the Executive in January, it can present a united, uncompromising front when campaigning for the Assembly elections.
In fact it is probably better tactically for the party to be outside government during the election campaign. If both wings of Ulster Unionism have any political nous they will maintain this picture of unity so that the party will have a fighting chance to resist the real threat from the DUP to be the leading unionist party.
What was crucial on Saturday was that Mr Trimble forced Mr Donaldson to modify his motion so that, rather than a prospective imminent withdrawal of Ulster Unionist ministers from the Executive, it now won't happen until sometime after January 18th when the council reconvenes.
In so doing Mr Trimble bought important time for the agreement and its institutions. Sometime after January 18th the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, can be expected to suspend the institutions for six weeks, after which it is likely he would call an election. But that would bring us to March or April, which is only weeks short of the original election date of May 1st. What happens afterwards naturally hinges on the result. We would have an Assembly but whether there would be an Executive is a more problematic question. We could be in for a period of review which, allowing for the summer recess, could bring us back to this time next year.
The fervent hope now of the governments and the Yes parties is that, with Mr Trimble instead of Mr Donaldson still at the helm, what is damaged can be repaired.