Can it be that David Trimble is a lucky politician? On Saturday his Assembly party whip, Mr Jim Wilson, appeared to go "off message" on the decommissioning issue. According to Mr Wilson: "It was not good to nail yourself so firmly to the post on decommissioning. A mistake has been made in being so firm. There must be room for manoeuvre."
Mr Trimble cannot have been pleased as he contemplated the DUP and UKUP denunciation of Mr Wilson's remarks as the first sign of the Ulster Unionist sell-out on decommissioning.
In fact, the party conference on Saturday had an excellent debate on the issue which revealed an intense unity on the issue: no participation with Sinn Fein in government without decommissioning.
But Mr Robert McCartney and the Rev Ian Paisley could be relied upon to ignore the conference and prepare their onslaughts - until, that is, up pops Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien to change the debate and dominate the headlines.
In the battle for middle Ulster Unionist opinion, the publication of Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien's Memoir: My Life and Themes is worth more to David Trimble than his share of the Nobel Prize. Dr O'Brien's eloquent advocacy of Irish unity - which contains much that could have been said with considerable force by any Irish nationalist at any time in this century - has a timeless quality, and this is both its strength and its weakness.
It is absolutely true that the million-strong unionist community has, at least, the possibility of more leverage on this island than it has in the wider context of the UK.
Anyway, as the former unionist prime minister, James Craig, openly acknowledged in the 1920s and 1930s, there were drawbacks to partition. But as his biographer, St John Ervine, pointed out, the core belief of Ulster Unionism remained: that it is better to be separated from the rest of Ireland than from Britain.
It is certainly the case that the current financial realities - unmentioned by Dr O'Brien - preclude any immediate move towards Irish unity. The London exchequer is currently providing Northern Ireland with a £3 billion subvention, roughly one-quarter of the current tax revenue in the Republic.
But the problem with Dr O'Brien's argument goes deeper than that: as long as a significant section of mainstream unionism believes, as the News Letter editorial put it on Saturday, that the Belfast Agreement, especially "in the context of a rapidly changing Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, represents an extraordinary advance for the Unionist position . . . placing [Northern Ireland] firmly within the shape of the new Union" they are likely to prefer that option.
After all, the drawbacks to partition noted by Sir James Craig - principally the neglect of reasonable co-operation and friendly interaction - are also, in principle, remedied by the Belfast Agreement.
Yesterday Robert McCartney defended Dr O'Brien's argument as representing, in a sense, only a worst-case scenario: relevant only after Mr Trimble collapses on decommissioning and the Patten Commission comes up with proposals which embody the Sinn Fein agenda on the RUC.
In fact, there is no certainty - some would say likelihood - that either Mr Trimble will collapse or the Patten Commission document will be such a subversive text. But, since the UKUP has consistently predicted the worst in such matters, it has to be assumed that Dr O'Brien is, to a degree at least, reflecting a real strain of political thought within that party. The DUP, irritated by the UKUP pretension to unionist purism, is unlikely to miss the point.
This is very helpful to Mr Trimble: because Dr O'Brien really has let the cat out of the bag. Mr Trimble's critics have always refused to discuss seriously the matter of London's intent; they may have tended to imply, and still do, that Mr Trimble's weakness as a negotiator led to the weakness - from a unionist point of view - in the agreement.
Not so long ago, when all realistic prospects had evaporated, some in the UKUP were still seriously advancing an intergrationist scenario. But this new argument places so much emphasis on British perfidy, the mystery becomes: how did Mr Trimble secure such a good deal? In the debate within unionism, Mr Trimble has failed thus far to get his opponents to come up with their alternative. But now that they have come up with it - a united Ireland - he will be delighted.
But the decommissioning difficulty remains. With the IRA and a section of the Sinn Fein leadership broadcasting the "never" word on decommissioning, the two governments have considerable reason to be dissatisfied with the current Sinn Fein position.
Mr Trimble is under relatively little pressure, even as deadlines ominously slip away. Sinn Fein has not yet internalised the reality that both governments do not share the view that decommissioning can be postponed indefinitely under the terms of the agreement. Instead, the republican leadership tends to think that it can defy both Dublin and London on this point. After all, it has been doing so successfully since 1993.
By doing so, the republican movement has enhanced its bargaining power but not, it should be noted, to the point where it could determine the political settlement. In fact, the possession of arms could not, for example, prevent the return of Stormont, or dramatic changes in Articles 2 and 3.
But the North desperately needs a sense that the day of the gunman has gone for good. The political battle which is now being fought is being fought for this reason above all others.
In the early 1980s, deeply disturbed by the election of Bobby Sands, Dr O'Brien appeared in British eyes to waver in his support for direct rule. As far as London was concerned, Dr O'Brien was regarded as the most reliable commentator on Irish affairs, and his uncertainty provoked doubts in the official mind. It was one of the factors - though not, of course, the most important - which led to the British rethink which included the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
Dr O'Brien has kept warmth and good feeling alive between Belfast and Dublin at times when otherwise there would have been none. Even so, David Trimble will be glad that at this moment of another rethink by Dr O'Brien, the Belfast Agreement is firmly in place.
Paul Bew is Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University Belfast
