Once more David Trimble is facing a determined challenge and once more the Belfast Agreement is under threat. Frank Millar assesses the First Minister's options
Might David Trimble sense an impending moment of personal decision? Finally to defy his critics, tell the unionist community the truth as he sees it, and - just maybe - save the Belfast Agreement he helped fashion and to which he remains committed?
Or be forced once more on to his opponents' ground, leading unionists into a crisis not of his choosing, risking the agreement's eventual implosion?
The fervent wish in Dublin and Washington - and no doubt (though they better understand his dilemma) in London also - is that the Ulster Unionist leader and First Minister will adopt the former strategy, and "sell" the Good Friday accord as at no time since the 1998 referendum.To which Mr Trimble's reply might be that he has done so before, and is in the process of doing so again.
Certainly he has pulled no punches in a letter to the delegates ahead of tomorrow's meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council. Calling some colourful language in aid, he demands: "Who really believes mainstream republicans will go back to the dirty little 'war' they fought before the ceasefires? Who really believes the Real or Continuity IRAs can bomb unionists into a United Ireland when the Provisionals failed? Can there be any doubt that the Provisionals are selling out on the republican ideals by helping to administer British rule?"
Necessary propaganda, maybe. However, this is actually what Mr Trimble believes: that "physical force" republicans ceded most in forging an agreement rooted in the principle of consent - an accord copperfastening Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom courtesy of the abandonment of the Republic's constitutional claim.
Mr Trimble has more than once rebuked this writer for venturing that, somewhere along the path of a strategic engagement in the talks process, he came to accept the bona fides of the republican leadership. Yet he plainly believes the war is effectively over. Nor, unlike his rivals in the UUP or the DUP, is he perturbed by Sinn Féin's insistence that the agreement marks the transition to inevitable Irish unity.
True, Mr Trimble's proposal for a Border poll on the same day as the next Assembly election could provide a psychological and political boost for unionists more inclined to believe the republican leadership than his own. It's underlying purpose, however, is to maximize the turnout and rally the moderates.
As explained by his friend Prof Paul Bew in an insightful piece in the Financial Times on Tuesday: "Essentially, voters would be asked to tolerate devolved government with Sinn Féin ministers as the most practical way of sustaining the Union."
At this writing it seems Mr Trimble is losing the argument for a Border poll. The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, is said to be "open-minded" on the subject. However Number 10 has told the UUP leader bluntly he will have to win Dublin's agreement, and there seems little prospect of that. Dublin wants to prioritise the implementation of the agreement. It also fears the impact of a highly divisive campaign on an SDLP already looking a beaten docket in the battle for ascendancy with Sinn Féin.
Within unionism, too, there are compelling grounds for debate about the wisdom of Mr Trimble's gambit. Catholics with no strong desire to accelerate the unity debate might find irresistible Mr Trimble's invitation to assert their tribal strength and increasing communal confidence.
A narrower-than-expected margin for the Union could compound rather than alleviate unionist fears. More fundamentally still, unionists might contend that - having accepted the John Hume doctrine that majoritarianism doesn't work in a divided society - they could hardly be expected to accept a one-off sectarian headcount as sufficient basis to effect a change of sovereignty and statehood.
But these are arguments for another time. The essential point about Mr Trimble's plebiscite plan is that he has no lack of confidence about the agreement he signed, or the direction in which it is taking the people of Northern Ireland.
Why, then, the endless sense of crisis and semi-permanent threat of UUP withdrawal from the Executive and other institutions? Can it be that he simply hasn't sold the agreement properly? Or is it purely a question of constraints imposed by a doubtful party from which in one bound - and with the requisite numbers at Stormont - he would be free? At times it has been hard to deny this last suspicion. However it is not the whole truth. For Mr Trimble - just as much as his party - is, as the Americans might say, conflicted.
Again Prof Bew provides the insight: "Mr Trimble's critics, notably the MPs Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside, have a compelling argument with which Mr Trimble sympathises. They want to know how unionists can legitimately tolerate obvious IRA violations of the agreement. . ."
Where Prof Bew may be wrong, however, is in his next confident assertion: "Mr Trimble's critics have one big weakness: they do not have a clue what to do next."
At the last two UUC meetings Mr Trimble was undoubtedly assisted by the stark simplicity of the dissidents' demand that the party withdraw from the Executive and collapse the institutions of government. And then what, demanded pro-agreement unionists.
This time it seems Mr Donaldson and his allies are bending themselves to provide convincing reply by way of proposals for a "graduated" series of demands and actions which would reinstate UUP "bottom lines" over IRA decommissioning and disbandment, and exclusion mechanisms - at the same time promising to maintain the Assembly as an instrument of devolved administration while honouring the party's 1998 pledge not to sit "in government" with "unreconstructed terrorists."
Usually reliable sources say Mr Donaldson's motion will reflect two absolutes. One, that "the status quo is not an option." Second, that the party cannot go into an election serving alongside Sinn Féin in the Executive. Assuming a timetable for managing an escalating political crisis to the turn of the year, this seems to point to a staged withdrawal in the run-up to the election and a manifesto commitment to renegotiate key aspects of the agreement thereafter.
Mr Trimble has relied on such stratagems in the past. Indeed, his letter yesterday allows for the possibility of another enforced suspension to press republicans to complete the transition to democracy. If his opponents offer crisis further down the road, it is one he himself does not, cannot preclude.
To have any chance of success, of course, Mr Donaldson must first frame a motion capable of persuading pro-Agreement unionists that he has a viable alternative policy. It is the knowledge that some previously loyal colleagues seem eager to be so persuaded that tells Mr Trimble this is a real and serious challenge.
Frank Millar is London Editor of The Irish Times