Analysis:The Ulster Unionist Party cannot quit the Executive table yet, writes Dan Keenan
Too old, too male and, perhaps until this conference, too downbeat to fight back. That certainly was how the Ulster Unionist Party looked at first glance. Sir Reg and colleagues are hopeful that the host of party reforms they enacted at the weekend will help transform the creaking organisation of the UUP and allow its small but younger and more vibrant element to come to the fore.
For that to happen, the party has no choice other than to believe fervently that the worst is finally over.
Its two ministers, Sir Reg and Michael McGimpsey are glad to take their seats in a functioning Executive, but they are convinced that body is being gradually dominated by the DUP, with Sinn Féin doing little to stop them.
With a clear desire on the part of many attending this conference to quit the powersharing Executive in order to fight the DUP and the dominant figure of Peter Robinson from without, the party now faces a difficult balancing act.
Two senior party members, Assembly members David Burnside and Basil McCrea, won easy applause from delegates when they suggested a new life in opposition.
But Sir Reg Empey knows he cannot do that - not yet anyway. Like the SDLP his party can hardly advocate the Belfast Agreement and then not support the bodies it establishes.
Sir Reg and Mr McGimpsey have to find a way of opposing the DUP and Sinn Féin from within. They supported the Robinson budget last week in draft form, but are desperate to have it amended in the consultation period. They have 10 weeks to achieve that.
One senior party source acknowledged the dilemma yesterday but confided there was a great deal of room for manoeuvre between quiet compliance under DUP rule and quitting the Executive table.
Sir Reg's speech, hampered as it was by the conference hall lights going on and off at key points, referred to what he believes are the banana skins that have threatened the Sinn Féin-DUP love-in at Stormont. He pointed to the Ritchie spat with Peter Robinson, the allegations of cronyism over the building of a visitors' centre at the Giant's Causeway and the on-off plans for development of the Maze prison.
He offered the following observation: "The argument over the Executive minutes, the Causeway saga and the ongoing hoo-ha over the stadium at the Maze, suggests that there is a very important case to be made for the electorate to have a real and credible alternative at election time to the Sinn Féin-DUP coalition."
That received the warmest and most spontaneous burst of applause of his entire speech. But it left hanging unanswered the question - how is this to be done? The notion of Sir Reg and McGimpsey gathering their papers and stomping out of the Executive alongside Margaret Ritchie certainly appeals. But it will not happen - because the party knows, and probably accepts in its heart, that it cannot.
To do so would be to hand on a plate to Peter Robinson what he has wanted all along - concrete proof that a mandatory, four-party coalition cannot work and that a voluntary Executive agreement is the only way forward.
A significant problem for them, as is also the case with the SDLP, is that they face DUP and Sinn Féin charges of duplicity by being part of an Executive that they want to oppose.
Robinson's budget is seen by the UUP hierarchy as a bid for DUP, if not personal, control of the Executive.
Yet unless they are very careful, both UUP and the SDLP ministers will be tagged with co-authorship of everything that emanates from the Executive - including that which they cannot stomach.