Ulster Unionist Assembly members are planning to rebuke Mr John Taylor publicly by electing their own deputy leader at Stormont, The Irish Times has learned.
Mr David Trimble, the UUP leader, is understood to be resisting the move by backbench Assembly members angered by Mr Taylor's decision to resign as a member of the party's negotiating team and to oppose participation in the Mitchell review of the Belfast Agreement - despite the decision of the Assembly party, approved by the policy-making Executive Committee, to do so.
However Assembly sources predicted the move would go ahead within two weeks of the party's annual conference in Co Fermanagh on Saturday, and suggested Sir Reg Empey as the most likely nominee, should he agree to take the post.
News of the anti-Taylor move comes at the start of a potentially difficult week for Mr Trimble.
Following Lord Molyneaux's most explicit denunciation of the Belfast Agreement at the Young Unionist conference on Saturday - and the former leader's effective declaration of war on the Assembly party - Trimble loyalists believe attempts will be made this week to tie the leader still more firmly to the "no guns no government" policy in respect of Sinn Fein membership of an executive.
The political battle over the Belfast Agreement and the proposed Patten reforms of the RUC will be carried to the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool where the Westminster bipartisan approach to Northern Ireland seems certain to come under renewed strain.
Mr Andrew Mackay, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, is expected to use his platform speech on Thursday morning to signal his clearest opposition yet to the proposed changes in the title and symbols of the RUC. He is also expected to warn against the "dangerous folly" of any significant reduction in police strength in Northern Ireland while the paramilitary threat remains undiminished.
The Tory mood on Northern Ireland, and the party's sense that the Blair government is misreading British public opinion, would be further underlined should delegates elect to have a debate on the subject despite an assertion by the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, that Conservative criticisms of the government only serve to undermine Mr Trimble's position.
Mr Trimble refuted this last week in Bournemouth from a shared platform with the Secretary of State, telling his audience he regarded recent Tory attacks on the government's management of the process as supportive of the agreement.
The UUP leader will spend three days in Blackpool, addressing the annual Unionist Information Office fringe event, as well as delivering the prestige lecture to the Conservative Policy Forum on Wednesday night.
However the leading dissident MP Mr Jeffrey Donaldson will also address a Conservative gathering in Blackpool tomorrow.
The mood at these events - and the reception accorded both men - will be carefully monitored by both governments ahead of a critical UUP conference, which they hope will be swiftly followed by substantive negotiations with Sinn Fein in the context of the Mitchell review.
Senior unionist sources acknowledge that any adjustment in UUP policy, built around the "sequencing" of devolution and decommissioning, would have to be approved by the party executive and would probably face the test of a full meeting of the ruling Ulster Unionist Council.
However, after Friday's abortive meeting between the two parties, the sources said they remained doubtful of Sinn Fein's ability to deliver firm commitments on decommissioning.
Mr Trimble yesterday insisted he was not even looking at procedural possibilities while the paramilitaries had yet to give a commitment to observe purely peaceful and democratic means, unequivocal cessations and "to decommission weapons . . . to a point where there is total disarmament of all paramilitary groups."
On the BBC's On The Record yesterday, it was put to Mr Trimble that he was not saying categorically "no guns no government".
He replied: "Oh I am, I am. There's no question of people being involved in the administration without decommissioning. That has to happen."
Later Sinn Fein's chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said he detected no movement in Mr Trimble's comments. "It's still word play as far as I'm concerned."
He said both governments accepted that the phrase "jumping together" meant setting up the political institutions together.