Mr David Trimble faces into another week of political strategising in preparation for next Saturday's challenge to his leadership at the Ulster Unionist Council. It is, by most reckonings, the eighth serious attempt to dislodge the First Minister as leader of mainstream unionism since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
This time his enemies, both within his own party and elsewhere, declare themselves confident that the Trimble era is coming to its end. He is finished, declared the DUP's Peter Robinson yesterday. Others are putting it about that at this stage even some of his most loyal supporters feel his cause is lost. But Mr Trimble himself is reported to be in confident mood, assuring doubters that he will be there to lead his party into the May elections and beyond.
The two governments have de facto supported Mr Trimble to this point. But of late Ministers and civil servants have been doing somewhat more thinking about how the political landscape might look, post-Trimble as First Minister. He could collapse the institutions and thus, ironically, succeed in retaining the leadership. Or he could lose the leadership, if not in this heave, then perhaps in the next. This could result in a new alignment within the Assembly, allowing another First Minister to emerge.
But any new First Minister, installed by whatever combination of forces, would face the same issues that have eroded Mr Trimble's support; the slow pace of IRA decommissioning, the continuance of paramilitary violence, the failure of Sinn Féin to endorse the new policing structures. Is Mr Jeffrey Donaldson or Mr David Burnside or Sir Reg Empey likely to make more significant progress with republicans on these issues than Mr Trimble?
The principal charge against Mr Trimble is that he has remained in the Executive alongside Sinn Féin with its active paramilitary linkages. He has tried to pursue a gradualist approach, along with the two governments and others, by edging and pushing republicans along the road to full democratic normalisation. It has not been completely successful yet. But it has not been a complete failure either. Over the four years since May 1998 there has been tremendous progress.
Mr Trimble's rivals' best plan appears to be to bring the entire edifice down. Out of that, some new form of direct rule, shared between London and Dublin might emerge. But unionism would come to the negotiating table and would inevitably come away with less than it has now. It is the realisation of this rock-bottom reality that will probably save Mr Trimble from his enemies again this week. The Belfast Agreement is unpalatable. But it is as good as it is going to get for unionism. If the members of the Ulster Unionist Council are wise they will recognise that and let Mr Trimble continue to make progress that is slow but real.