It is Jeffrey Donaldson's misfortune that unfailing good manners and near-perfect control of his temper make him seem sanctimonious, not saintly. Even the resemblance to Daniel O'Donnell that he good-naturedly acknowledges works against him: what might be called eternal boyishness is seen as prissiness, writes Fionnuala O Connor.
But "little Jeffrey", as Ian Paisley demeans him, is now in his 40th year and youth's promise has tarnished. Jeffrey has never openly challenged David Trimble for the post of Ulster Unionist leader. "He knows on most occasions he wouldn't have won," says an unfriendly insider. "The one time he might have, when Martin Smyth ran against David instead, Jeffrey bottled it." In the 10 special meetings of the 900-strong policy-making Ulster Unionist Council which he has helped convene, motions criticising Trimble have been narrowly defeated. Donaldson and a diminishing band of associates then regroup and try again.
The most damaging criticism is that he lacks nerve, wounds but fails to strike. His many enemies claim now that he was pushed into calling for next Monday's meeting by the party's anti-Agreement old guard, fearful that the cancellation of the Assembly election may preserve Trimble.
Above all, it is Donaldson's insistence that love of party motivates him, not ambition to be Ulster Unionist leader, that makes unionists spit and nationalists swear. He didn't always have that effect. There was a moment in the talks that preceded negotiation of the Good Friday agreement when Jeffrey Donaldson seemed the most open-minded Ulster Unionist at the table. For a while, some in Foreign Affairs dreamed that "young Jeffrey" might become an energetic power-sharer. As one nationalist said: "He engages with arguments,where others won't." That was before Sinn Féin arrived in talks. It seems a long time ago.
Some recall Donaldson becoming steadily more hardline. Another unionist thinks "the mask of liberalism dropped when he got the Lagan Valley seat." He became MP for Lagan Valley in May 1997, succeeding his patron and mentor, former Ulster Unionist leader Jim Molyneaux, who thought unionists' best hope was to do nothing and memorably called the peace process the most "destabilising" development in his lifetime.
In January 1998, Donaldson upstaged David Trimble during a television press conference in the most brazen way possible, by tearing in half the Framework document - bystanders noted that he'd half-torn it in advance - that prefigured negotiations but daringly suggested a "dynamic" towards Irish unification. When agreement was reached on Good Friday, Jeffrey walked out angrily, as did other youthful members of the UUP team. The departure perfectly represented unionist ambivalence towards the Agreement, then and since: almost 50 per cent opposed from the outset.
The final break with Trimble apparently came when the younger man realised prisoners would get early release whether paramilitaries decommissioned or not. The story persists that Jeffrey is strongly influenced by his wider family, which lost two relatives in the RUC to IRA bomb and bullet, and insisted he must not be implicated in the release deal. It is still Donaldson's most telling complaint, resonating powerfully in the part of the unionist soul that believes only God should forgive, and with a good many others who will always resent the bargain won by gunmen.
But the Donaldson whose objections helped ensure that Ulster Unionism would never make the best of the Agreement has changed in the process. What he really wants is unclear. "Have you ever heard me say I want to be leader of the party?" he laughed in a recent radio programme, mocking the idea. If not that, what?
Trimble's methods of surviving the war of attrition are costly. At the last special Council meeting in September 2002, he moved on to Donaldson's ground, merging their two resolutions. The secret fear in London and Dublin is that he'll do the same thing again next Monday - which would effectively leave no pro-Agreement unionism.
Yet Donaldson has seemed lonely and rattled, alternating priorities between what he characterises as equally dread outcomes: the prospect that demilitarisation would scrap the largely Protestant "'home units" of the Royal Irish Regiment, and the Republic "interfering" in Northern Ireland's internal affairs, as allegedly outlined in the two governments' Joint Declaration on implementing the Agreement.
Donaldson blames bad negotiation for both, fingering Trimble and Sir Reg Empey. Empey and others have hit back. The charges seem flat: Dublin involvement is now a given. Jeffrey's latest misjudgement may be his half-voiced, then semi-withdrawn intention to quit the party if Monday goes against him. Few believe him.
The next to worst scenario for Ulster Unionism is that on Monday Jeffrey loses again, but stays. The worst is that he wins and takes the party back to Molyneaux-land: or that David Trimble meets him halfway.