Today sees what may prove to be a final, fatal assault on Mr David Trimble's leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party. Forty eight hours earlier Mr Gerry Adams said that he may call a Sinn Féin Ardfheis to enable republicans to fully buy in to the new policing arrangements for Northern Ireland. The two processes are inextricably linked.
The republican movement is advancing inexorably towards full participation in the democratic process. When it fully accepts and supports the Police Service of Northern Ireland it will, in effect, be consigning the IRA to history. Sinn Féin ministers cannot simultaneously support or sustain an illegal army and a legitimate police service on the same streets.
Unhappily, it seems that the pace at which republicans can or will change may not be sufficient to enable pro-Agreement unionism to survive.
Mr Trimble faces the Ulster Unionist Council today with many observers expressing doubts about his ability to command a majority of votes against whatever motion is to be sprung upon him by his rivals.
His case, put in one form or another, will be that republicanism is being forced, step-by-step, to an acceptance of democratic norms. The correct strategy, he will argue, is to maintain the pressure which is driving that transformation until it reaches completeness.
Many wavering delegates at today's meeting will acknowledge that there is merit in this argument. The progress since 1998 is there to see. But the wider unionist community sees a different picture: the IRA remains active while its political associates sit in the Executive; alleged IRA activists are awaiting trial in Colombia; Sinn Féin withholds its support from the PSNI; republican dissidents continue to plot and kill. Against this landscape, pro-Agreement UUP candidates will take a terrible hammering in the May elections. Many of those at today's meeting may have little stomach for undoing David Trimble. But they may pay the price in political obliteration if they go into the elections supporting the status quo.
Mr Trimble has shown extraordinary political adroitness in the past and it may be that again he will escape the snares of his enemies today. Those enemies have reportedly developed a policy or strategy which, they claim, would enable the Assembly to continue in operation, although the Executive would cease to operate, thus taking the levers of power away from the hands of the Sinn Féin ministers. It remains to be seen if that will be persuasive.
But delegates who understand the realpolitik which has pertained since the signing of the Agreement know that unionism will get poor fare from the two governments if they come to the table having destroyed the devolved administration which it established. Mr Trimble's way is slow.
But it is more likely to be sure.