Another Saturday, another meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast. David Trimble's opponents, having failed to prevent his re-election as First Minister, are gnawing away at the trusty old bone of decommissioning in the hope of chaining the UUP leader to yet another deadline. This time around, though, the climate and the terms of the debate are markedly different. For a start, Mr Trimble has seized the initiative. Earlier this week he wrote to every member of the 860-strong council, pointing out that his political tactics had already succeeded in bringing about a start to decommissioning, and appealing to them to give "resounding support" to his strategy for the future.
The UUP leader's plan, he explained, is to call a round-table conference of all the pro-agreement parties, including Sinn FΘin to settle the terms and the timetable on which the decommissioning process should proceed. This is a proposal which was first put forward by the SDLP at the Weston Park talks. At that time it was rejected by the UUP. The fact that David Trimble is now advocating it as the way ahead is evidence of just how much and how quickly the political landscape has changed.
The first signs of that change came when David Trimble had to look to the Women's Coalition and the Alliance Party to secure his re-election as First Minister. For the Ulster Unionist Party this was a bitter pill to swallow, comparable to the moment when Fianna Fβil was forced to accept that, if it wished to stay in power, coalition was inevitable.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of what happened on that day. For the first time the pro-agreement parties began to take joint ownership and responsibility for the success of the accord. It would have been unthinkable, even a few weeks ago, for the UUP leadership to propose to its own council members that the best way to sort out decommissioning once and for all was to sit down and discuss the problem with representatives of Sinn FΘin.
We have also had evidence of a closer and more pro-active relationship between the First Minister and his deputy. This has been seen to most effect in the way David Trimble and Mark Durkan moved, together and quickly, to deal with the running sore of the daily confrontations outside the Holy Cross school. The SDLP leader's decision to accept an invitation to speak to the North Down unionist party is another sign of the thaw in the atmosphere. After the meeting, Lady Sylvia Hermon, who asked Mark Durkan to come along in the first place, said she would be quite prepared to issue a similar invitation to Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness, once the problem of decommissioning was solved to everybody's satisfaction.
We all know that Co Down isn't typical of either side. (This, after all, was the only county in Northern Ireland to vote for the removal of Rule 21). I have heard Lady Sylvia Hermon dismissed as "politically naive". But her visible presence in the Ulster Unionist Party underlines a trend which was evident at the party's annual conference in Belfast a couple of weeks ago.
This may come as a surprise to those who described the gathering as elderly and dull, (it depends on your perspective, I suppose) but from talking to delegates I formed the distinct impression that the liberal middle classes may be returning to the Ulster Unionist Party. It could be more correct to say they are discovering it.
For years it has been a truism that those who should have been giving leadership to the unionist community had simply abdicated from politics. I remember one bemused British official talking about the difference he had found in meeting members of the two communities socially. Protestants never wanted to talk about politics while Catholics never wanted to talk about anything else.
These middle-class unionists - a type described memorably by Paul Bew as "the Prod in the garden centre" - did stir themselves to vote in favour of the Belfast Agreement, thus allowing the two governments to declare that a majority of both communities in Northern Ireland supported the deal.
The idea that they should go further and become involved politically in order to make the agreement work was still a bridge too far. Now it is just possible that that some of them are beginning to understand that, if the Belfast accord is to survive, David Trimble needs their active support. One delegate at the UUP conference told me it had simply never occurred to him to join a political party.
He had gone along to a meeting of his local UUP branch as a favour to a councillor who happened to be a friend. When he went home that night he had been elected vice chairman and had been working as a pro-agreement unionist ever since.
David Trimble is still in a tight corner. The Rev Ian Paisley has promised that his party will overtake the DUP at the next assembly elections and that he will destroy the Belfast Agreement. Nobody, least of all myself, thinks that civilised exchanges between politicians in constituencies like North Down are going to solve the deep and bitter alienation that festers in loyalist working class areas. But if the pro-agreement parties can be seen to work together, that will go a long way towards building a warm house in which both communities can feel at ease.
mholland@irish-times.ie