With just one day of canvassing left before voting takes place for the Assembly, Mr David Trimble yesterday set out his stall before the middle ground of political thinking within Northern Ireland. He described, with conviction and with some passion, a society where permanent peace is not a dream.
It is still possible to be broadly confident of an election outcome along the lines indicated by last week's Irish Times/MRBI poll. Almost 80 per cent of those who intend to vote said they will support parties which have backed the Belfast Agreement. Mr Trimble's Ulster Unionists, although down by six points since the previous poll two weeks earlier, still seem set to be the largest party in the Assembly with the SDLP running a close second. Anti-agreement candidates along with dissidents from within Mr Trimble's party may take about 30 seats.
On this basis the new Assembly is workable. Little can be taken for granted however and Mr Trimble himself has cautioned against assuming that its workability is now a foregone conclusion. Any slippage from last week's poll figures could see Mr Trimble's room to manoeuvre eroded while any advance on the 30 seats likely to go to dissidents and anti-agreement candidates could create serious procedural disruption. Those who campaigned for the Agreement at referendum will need support in similar measure on Thursday.
Mr Trimble has been under visible pressure. Many in the mainstream of unionism who backed the Agreement at referendum did so in the expectation that decommissioning would take place immediately or in the near future. Many believed that there would be some linkage between decommissioning and the release of prisoners. In particular, much support for Mr Trimble's position was linked to his assurances that he will not sit with Sinn Fein until there is progress on actual decommissioning. Mr Trimble cannot point to great successes in delivering on these expectations.
Sinn Fein has not been helpful where it might have been. There has been no declaration - as the Government asked of it - that the `war' is irrevocably over. Rather have there been coded signals of IRA intentions to disarm on its own terms. It is not enough. For all that he has pointed to these signs as hopeful indicators for the future, Mr Trimble has been left dangling in the wind, dangerously exposed to opponents within and without his own party. Sinn Fein had better hope that it has not weakened its potential partner in the new administration to the point where he can be paralysed or held hostage by those on his own right wing.
On the assumption that the election results, once announced, reflect broadly the pattern indicated in the polls, Mr Trimble should find himself in a position to address the formation of a new executive for Northern Ireland. It cannot come into existence until next year and Mr Trimble and the other leaders will create in the first instance a "shadow executive". He will not, strictly speaking, at this point, be sharing in an administration with Sinn Fein representatives, since the shadow executive will be just that. But there can be little doubt that if he nominates even a shadow team of Ministers with Sinn Fein members included, before there is progress on decommissioning, he will be in danger of losing crucial support to the dissidents.
Hence, it is not difficult to understand Mr Trimble's instinct to `play it long' in bringing the shadow executive into existence. The battle for the soul of unionism is coming to its peak and although Mr Trimble has the better of the struggle at present, his margin of advantage is not so great as to be beyond reversal. The electoral test on Thursday will be decisive.