Jeffrey Donaldson is not predicting victory for the anti agreement bloc at the Ulster Unionist Council meeting at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast tomorrow, and certainly neither is he conceding defeat. Listening to him, though, the odds would seem in favour of Mr David Trimble.
Mr Donaldson indicates the No side has more ground to make up than the pro-agreement campaigners.
"I think that clearly we would be happy that the 43 per cent that we secured on the previous [UUC] vote is solid in terms of opposition to the IRA deal. And there are probably about 10 per cent in the centre of the party who are undecided at the moment. It is still all to play for in terms of the final result."
Guns, flags, British symbols and the RUC are at the heart of unionist misgivings about the Hillsborough deal, and there is no escaping any of these issues at his office, Molyneaux House, in Lisburn town centre. The British Union flag flutters outside the building. Inside, pictures of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Molyneaux and Enoch Powell adorn the wall.
There is also a picture commemorating RUC officers killed during the Troubles. Two of them were his cousins, Samuel Donaldson and Alexander Donaldson, murders that left deep wounds on the Lagan Valley MP and his family. Hardly surprising therefore that he is fixated on IRA weaponry.
Today Mr Donaldson is planning to furnish all 860 members of the UUC with his promised alternative to the Hillsborough deal, based on the IRA's promise to open some arms dumps and to put its weapons completely and verifiably beyond use. He has also requested a meeting with David Trimble to discuss his proposals, to determine if they can establish common ground.
In his office in Lisburn yesterday, Mr Donaldson remained coy about the detail of the alternative but, he agreed, central to the amendment is an attempt to exact more from the IRA. Along the lines of the question previously posed by Seamus Mallon, he seeks to know how and when the IRA will disarm.
"Put the IRA to the test," is the Ulster Unionist leader's mantra of recent days.
"Surely implicit in that exhortation is the admission that we don't have the clarity and certainty that we were looking for," said Mr Donaldson. "If we did have, we would not be talking about putting them to the test, it would be clear what was going to happen."
Seasoned Ulster Unionists in the Yes camp, such as Michael McGimpsey and Ken Maginnis, regard 37-year-old Mr Donaldson as politically immature and self-serving. Party adviser Alex Kane on radio yesterday described him as the Boy King. Comparisons also have been made with Daniel O'Donnell.
Mr Donaldson rides the gags about the Donegal singer with good humour. The other gibes he resents but regards as part of the price of standing by his principles. "I have worked hard to avoid making this into a personality issue. This debate is too important to be diminished to the level of personality. And it saddens me when I see some senior colleagues lowering themselves to the level of personal attack. That says something about the weakness of their argument."
His Lagan Valley seat was held previously by the former UUP leader Jim Molyneaux, his friend and mentor. But he is not Lord Molyneaux's Dauphin, at least yet. And neither is tomorrow's UUC meeting about Jeffrey promoting Jeffrey, he says. "This is categorically not about personal interest."
Were that his strategy, he would have accepted the Belfast Agreement in the first place, because that is how to get on in the party. When he walked away from the Good Friday accord two years ago, he was acting from conscience. "I could not go out from Stormont and look people in the eye that I represented and say `this is a good deal, and I want you to vote for it'. "
Of course, like any politician, ultimately he desires to lead his party . . . but in good time. "I have said before and repeat again I am in no hurry to become leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. I recognise the very difficult position that David Trimble finds himself in, the enormous pressures placed upon him, and I don't envy him those pressures."
But why does he seek more from the IRA when experienced colleagues, the two governments, the other parties, former and dissident republicans, insist that it would be lunacy to abandon this deal - that all that would be achieved would be the removal of the IRA offer to put arms verifiably beyond use?
"Is life going to be dictated by what the IRA will or will not do? And that is a key question. The threat of violence posed by the retention of those weapons is the dynamic upon which the republican movement intends to progress its political agenda," argues Mr Donaldson.
IS he seeking republican capitulation when everybody outside the No camp tells him it just won't happen? "This is a nonsense," he protests, "this red herring that republicans continue to trot out about surrender. I am not looking for symbolic acts of surrender. I just want the IRA to do the decent thing and get rid of the weapons and in doing so demonstrate its commitment to peaceful means."
Whatever happens tomorrow, Mr Donaldson will stay within the UUP. "I have been a member of this party for almost 20 years. I have never voted for, or belonged to, any other political party. It's not everybody in the Ulster Unionist Party who can say that," he adds, in an apparent reference to Mr Trimble's time in Vanguard.
He doesn't accept that a No vote tomorrow will bury for years the possibility of true nationalist-unionist consensus. And, mindful of the UUP losing its seat on Banbridge Council to the DUP yesterday, Mr Donaldson warns that this is the future for the party if the UUC votes Yes - electoral disaster.
But even if the UUC votes to reinstate the Executive, Mr Donaldson, to use that oft-repeated phrase, is not going to go away, you know.
"Anybody who believes that Saturday is the end of this debate doesn't understand the politics of Northern Ireland. I think we still have a long way to go before this debate is finally concluded."