Sir Reg Empey used his leader's address to the UUP's annual conference to claim responsibility for ensuring devolution at Stormont was to unionists' liking.
Sir Reg was sharply dismissive of DUP claims that it was the party which was "getting it right". He portrayed Ian Paisley's party as guilty of a series of U-turns on key matters of principle, not least the decision to enter powersharing with Sinn Féin.
"I am sick to the back teeth of the DUP's orgy of self-praise and self-promotion," he told delegates.
"A cheap tin badge with 'getting it right' stamped on it isn't half as valuable as having had the courage and the foresight to getting it started in the first place. Boasting about a 'fair deal' or a 'better deal' doesn't take the same degree of political skill as being able to say that you delivered the deal in the first place." He accused the DUP of acting in defiance of its stated aims.
"The sight of Peter Robinson leapfrogging from the front bench to the back bench in order to put the boot into Margaret Ritchie makes a total mockery of the claim that the DUP had put accountability at the heart of the system."
He then confronted the lead unionist party: "Insisting that you have 'smashed' Sinn Féin and put it in its place looks like a joke when the reality is that the new deal consisted of a carve-up of office and a ganging-up against the smaller parties."
To warm applause he claimed: "The truth of the matter is simple: had we accepted the DUP's advice, predictions and judgment calls in 1997/98, there wouldn't be an Assembly today."
He was also uncompromising in relation to the IRA and its stated claim that its organisation has been stood down.
"I accept the IRA has changed in the last few years," he said.
"But rather than believing that it has gone away entirely, I suspect that it may actually be in a form of suspended animation - a hibernation.
"But the 'potential' of the IRA still exists and it will exist for so long as the IRA itself exists. The IRA needs to disappear altogether, disband, dismantle all of its structures. That, and that alone, would be the clearest possible sign to unionism that we really are living in a new political dispensation."
Sir Reg Empey was well satisfied with the party organisation reforms adopted by his party, which will empower him and his senior colleagues at headquarters.
The leadership now should have control of party policy, the constituency associations and the choice of candidates. These powers were once delegated widely through complex structures that Sir Reg believes belong to a bygone era.
The extraordinary general meeting that preceded the weekend annual conference and that enacted the reforms was arguably the more important of the weekend's gatherings.