There will be immediate relief in Dublin and London that Mr David Trimble has, as one official put it, "survived to fight another day". Mr Trimble declared his leadership "rock solid" after Monday's meeting of the UUP Executive. Mr John Taylor's defection had not visibly changed the political landscape. Indeed Mr Taylor chose not to carry his opposition to continued participation in the review of the Belfast Agreement to the meeting itself.
Yet Mr Trimble cut a lonely figure, with only Mr Ken Maginnis of his parliamentary caucus still by his side. Moreover his opponents have their own explanation for the absence of blood-letting. They calculate there is no stomach in the party for a leadership challenge and see no need to force the issue while Mr Trimble stands firm on a "no guns, no government" policy, augmented now by opposition to the proposed Patten reforms of the RUC. In other words, Mr Trimble can only consider himself safe while he remains the prisoner of the rejectionists in his own ranks.
If this offers Mr Trimble some sort of security of tenure within Glengall Street, it can only add to the despondency of those looking to him to rescue a Belfast Agreement now suffering a steady seepage of credibility. This newspaper understands Mr Trimble's difficulties. His base has been diminishing since the Assembly elections last year. The IRA's activities of recent months, and his party's pained response to Patten, would seem to have further reduced his room for manoeuvre. But understanding of itself is little help, for this has the appearance now of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Mr Trimble remains boxed-in then he is surely finished - if not as leader of the UUP, certainly as architect and custodian of the Agreement.
He urgently needs to leap beyond the constraints of party management and establish a strategy for something beyond mere survival - reconnecting in the process with his original reasons for signing-up to the Agreement, and with those unionists he brought with him in the Yes campaign. And if the Ulster Unionists could look beyond issues of titles and emblems, Patten surely offers the potential to transform the political and decommissioning debate.
Whatever IRA offer the Taoiseach and Prime Minister divined last July now needs to be put back on the table, and made explicit. Mr Trimble should then tie his commitment to establish the Executive to a timetable for decommissioning, acceptable to General de Chastelain. It is arguable that Dublin and the SDLP should consider afresh the question of sanction against Sinn Fein should the IRA fail to deliver. But if this is not forthcoming, Mr Trimble is free to invoke the sanction proposed by President Clinton, exercising his right to walk away.
As in July, so now, the need is for a formula enabling the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein to "jump together". There is one new ingredient, potentially to Mr Trimble's advantage. Patten envisages the transfer of substantial policing and criminal justice powers to the Assembly. Mr Trimble should now press Mr Blair to commit to that process in the November Queen's Speech, with legislation in the next session. Nothing would better justify Mr Trimble's claim to have reversed the process commenced with Brian Faulkner's resignation and the imposition of Direct Rule.
More importantly, nothing (decommissioning included) would better equip Northern Ireland's politicians to begin the overdue assault on "the mafia society" which Mr Trimble has repeatedly identified as being at the core of unionist distrust of the peace process.