David Trimble's victory is no reason for triumphalism among his UUP supporters, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
David Trimble's victory at the Ulster Unionist Council on Saturday was truly remarkable. By any objective assessment it must be adjudged a serious setback for Mr Jeffrey Donaldson. It is also being seen by pro-Agreement unionists loyal to Mr Trimble as a stinging personal rebuke to Sir Reg Empey.
In terms of the wider political process in Northern Ireland, Saturday's outcome might also change Mr Trimble's calculations - and thus those of Mr Tony Blair - about the wisdom of holding assembly elections this autumn.
Mr Donaldson will argue that nothing is changed, and it may prove to be so. However, the failure of this latest challenge to his authority has, at the very least, handed some power of initiative back to Mr Trimble.
Certainly his survival this time can be seen as of a qualitatively different order from his margins of advantage in previously close-run votes.
Mr Donaldson and his allies were fighting on the most promising ground since their attempt to save the title of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The UUC delegates were asked to call a halt to the leader's ill-advised plan to expel Mr Donaldson, the Rev Martin Smyth and Mr David Burnside in an over-the-top response to their decision to resign the whip.
This questionable enterprise looked all the more so when the courts overruled the UUP officers, ordered the appointment of a new disciplinary committee and lifted the suspension on the three MPs pending a proper hearing.
Mr Trimble suffered a heavy blow when Sir Reg, and the party's MEP, Mr Jim Nicholson - previously key allies - declined to back the proposed disciplinary action. On Friday night Lord Kilclooney (formerly Mr Trimble's deputy) seemed to ensure Mr Donaldson's victory when he denounced the action and said those party officers who initiated it should resign.
And, of course, the debate on the narrow question of disciplinary action was played out against the backdrop of the news that Sir Reg was in talks with Mr Donaldson about the policy basis on which they might together offer an alternative to the Trimble leadership.
While Saturday's was not strictly speaking a "confidence" vote, if ever there was a moment when the UUC might send Mr Trimble notice to quit this was surely it. The delegates declined to do so, confirming instead that Mr Trimble remains their leader of choice.
Enter, here, the necessary caveats. This is no occasion for Trimbleista triumphalism. The Ulster Unionist Party remains paralysed. The possibility of an emerging anti-Agreement majority at Stormont which obliged Mr Trimble to have Mr Blair postpone the assembly elections remains.
And there is indisputable force to Lord Kilclooney's observation that a 55 per cent mandate is an insufficient basis on which to govern the UUP, never mind Northern Ireland. However, if Mr Trimble's 55 per cent is insufficient, Mr Donaldson must acknowledge that his 45 per cent falls even farther short.
If some modesty is now called for from Mr Donaldson, it would certainly be in order, too, from a jubilant Trimble camp which, despite the deeply satisfying nature of Saturday's result, still finds itself the minority shareholder within unionism, up to its knees in the debris of the crash-landed Belfast Agreement.
Nor should admiration of Mr Trimble's continued heroism obscure the fact that some of his difficulties are of his own making. Even friends fear the UUP leader too often appears a fully-signed-up adherent to British state thinking rather than as the necessarily semi-detached and critical leader of Ulster Unionism.
And despite complaints to the contrary from Sinn Féin, it is Mr Trimble's fidelity to the Agreement which has led him to take too many risks with his own party.
During the negotiations earlier this year he seemed perilously close to repeating the mistakes of his Weston Park experience when the UUP's "single issue agenda" for IRA disarmament translated into a fresh batch of concessions to Sinn Féin.
Even some of his "successes" in negotiation appear highly doubtful from a unionist perspective. It really is very hard to see why, for example, the UUP should be divided over a proposed international monitoring body which does involve Dublin in matters concerning the composition of the Northern Ireland executive.
Without question, Mr Trimble's high standing with the British Prime Minister is a vital asset insufficiently recognised within the wider unionist community. That said, intimacy with Downing Street can also be a dangerous thing, as Lord Molyneaux could remind Mr Trimble.
No 10's cheer-leading response to his plan to expel the three dissident MPs - as if this was Mr Trimble's equivalent of Mr Blair's battle to create New Labour - should have been enough to ring the alarm bells.
It is not the function of the leader to be expelling half his parliamentary party. In the sober aftermath of Saturday's success, some of his advisers think Mr Trimble should disregard those ultras urging vengeance and put the disciplinary action on hold.
Sir Reg and Mr Donaldson are right in one vital respect: the UUP needs a greater consensus on the terms to be obtained from Sinn Féin and the IRA as the price for the restoration of the power-sharing executive.
The painful truth for the Trimbelistas is that the creation of a new consensus will require an accommodation with the internal enemy. Crucially, it would now seem open to Mr Trimble to seize the high ground in the knowledge that the enemy, for the time being at least, has been weakened.
This is not because the "dream ticket" plot for an Empey-Donaldson leadership is out in the open. It is perfectly respectable for Sir Reg to conclude, if he has, that things cannot continue as before and that an alternative leadership might be better equipped to secure Mr Trimble's devolution project.
It is, rather, because Mr Donaldson has signalled his readiness to ditch those hardline colleagues who certainly don't want Sinn Féin about the place in a leadership pact the very purpose of which is to save the Trimble project.
Put crudely, the logic of the dream ticket is that Jeffrey (who has not agreed that the leadership would go to Reg) would be David, albeit having first secured better terms from the Provos.
The tough news for both of them - and the important message for the republican leadership - is that the majority of UUC delegates would prefer to stick with the David they already have.
This does not necessarily increase the prospect of Sinn Féin concluding an "acts of completion" deal prior to an election sufficient to enable Mr Trimble to commit his party to resume power-sharing immediately thereafter.
However, it is to suggest that Mr Donaldson could be forced to the point of decision in a newly elected assembly party still led by Mr Trimble.