`What on earth did they think was going to happen?" Incredulous at Ulster Unionist reaction to his proposals last September, Chris Patten framed the question that would so badly sting Mr Trimble.
Monitoring the Westminster proceedings from Brussels yesterday, Mr Patten may well have asked himself the question afresh. Mr Trimble was still feeling the pain, and the last British governor of Hong Kong would doubtless consider much of it self-inflicted.
Certainly, Mr Patten was genuinely surprised that Mr Trimble and his colleagues should or could have been surprised at his conclusions in respect of the Royal Ulster Constabulary's title and symbols. As there was surprise among watching journalists yesterday when Mr Ken Maginnis claimed it was "misleading" for Mr Peter Mandelson to suggest any linkage between the Patten proposals and anything the Ulster Unionists had agreed to on Good Friday 1998. For in the mind of Mr Patten and his colleagues, as to most outside observers, it was, and is, manifestly clear that the International Commission and the Belfast Agreement were two sides of the same coin.
The agreement itself promised a new inclusive political dispensation which would bring Sinn Fein, not simply into the democratic process, but to the very heart of Northern Ireland's government.
Yes, the prize to be extracted from nationalists and republicans would be acceptance of the consent principle governing any subsequent change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. However, the agreement never purported to make unionists of nationalists or republicans.
With inclusivity would come "parity of esteem". And, when it came to the matter of policing, a blind man on a galloping horse could have seen that that would translate into the end of the identification of Northern Ireland's police service with the symbolism of the British state.
For all the seeming inevitability of this, when the Patten proposals finally materialised the Ulster Unionists were shocked and outraged, and vowed to overturn them. Hence their bleak and somewhat sad demeanour yesterday. Mr Mandelson at least affected to feel their pain. In a perfect world, he said, he would have kept the RUC's name, but the issue was not whether the name of the RUC was wrong, or something not to be proud of.
The Secretary of State fully understood why serving and former officers, their families and indeed widows were so proud of the royal title, but the issue was "whether a change in name, underlining a new start, is a necessary and indispensable part of attracting balance of recruits".
Of course, IRA intimidation of Catholics had also been a barrier to recruitment, but Patten had deemed a name-change essential to Northern Ireland's new beginning, and Mr Mandelson agreed.
On other matters Mr Mandel son's "concessions" to unionist opinion proved indeed the "thin gruel" foretold by the Trimble camp earlier in the week. The "Save the RUC" campaign had not succeeded even in retaining the cap badge with its crown and harp. Instead, Mr Mandelson said the design of a symbol for the new force would be left to the new Police Board, subject to his approval.
What he didn't make explicit was that any design will most assuredly be subject to the same "sufficient consensus" rules which otherwise govern Northern Ireland's new political order.
The one area of substantial comfort for Mr Trimble came, as reported in yesterday's Irish Times, on the question of the controversial District Police Partnership Boards. Mr Mandelson said he would not presently proceed with the Patten proposal to allow the DPPBs raise extra funds on the rates to purchase services on top of normal policing. And he made it clear that he intends the DPPBs should have "a primarily consultative role".
Mr Trimble and his colleagues have seen the DPPBs as a potential vehicle by which paramilitaries could actually assume local police functions, and will have the opportunity during a long legislative process to ensure that Mr Mandelson's promised safeguards are enshrined in law.
However, if Mr Trimble had any inclination yesterday to try and snatch victory from the teeth of defeat, it was probably arrested by the knowledge, shared throughout his party and his constituency, that on the issues on which he had made his stand Mr Mandelson, and Mr Blair, had overruled him.
Visibly angry, Mr Trimble pre-empted Mr Mandelson's statement during Prime Minister's Questions, telling Mr Blair the decision to scrap the royal title could not dishonour the RUC but would dishonour his government.
The Prime Minister carefully chose not to escalate the conflict with his First Minister for Northern Ireland, insisting that no dishonour was intended and paying fulsome tribute to the force's bravery over the past 30 years.
It was a restraint Mr Mandelson might well have emulated a while later during an angry exchange with Mr Maginnis. The UUP's security spokesman has an undoubted knack of getting under ministerial skin, and Mr Mandelson doubtless didn't take kindly to the suggestion that he was "a betrayer". However, Mr Maginnis is also one of just two Ulster Unionist MPs still supporting Mr Trimble and the agreement, and he certainly won't have taken kindly to Mr Mandelson's suggestion that his public attacks were at odds with private compliments.
Momentarily, it appeared, the Secretary of State was more concerned with his own pain than that of Mr Maginnis, and relations between the two may very well now revert to what was the norm in the Mowlam era.
However, the Secretary of State will be relieved to learn that none of that will impinge on Mr Maginnis's attitude to the agreement or the survival of the powersharing Executive. The Fermanagh MP stressed last night that the reconvened meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council is not about policing, and that the decision to be taken there would not be affected by yesterday's developments.