Trimble may find the ranks of the UUP Brutuses are reaching critical mass,writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Here's a familiar line: David Trimble now faces the sternest test of his leadership. The knives are out again.
Mr Trimble has survived all previous heaves, but it's different this time because there are more Brutus figures lurking in the Ulster Unionist wings. More once-loyal supporters are wondering is this the time for Sir Reg Empey to emerge from the shadows as a compromise leader between Mr Jeffrey Donaldson and Mr Trimble.
The Donaldson camp of the party has lodged the necessary 60 signatories to call another Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) for some time in early to mid-September. Their motion demands the lifting of the threat of disciplinary action against the dissident MPs who resigned the Westminster whip - Mr Donaldson, the party president, the Rev Martin Smyth, and Mr David Burnside.
As ever the real motivation is to unseat Mr Trimble. There could be some technical objections to the UUC dealing with disciplinary matters, which are normally the responsibility of the party's executive, but if the wording is ruled invalid some other form of words can be found or Mr Trimble could even pre-empt his tormentors by calling a UUC himself. Death by a thousand cuts. How Ulster Unionists love this form of political torture. But it will be even more difficult for Mr Trimble to overcome this threat.
At the last UUC in June, Mr Trimble withstood Mr Donaldson's challenge by 54 per cent to 46 per cent. There are about 860 members on the UUC and Mr Donaldson needs 30 or 40 of them to swing their votes to him to win this battle.
One former Trimble loyalist confirmed to The Irish Times yesterday that he voted against Mr Trimble in June, and he expects more wavering Trimbleites to cross the line in September.
He is not of the Donaldson bloc, which will vote against Trimble no matter what the circumstances. He is more a political pragmatist, a centrist, a former Assembly member who accepts the power-sharing logic of the Belfast Agreement, but who fears that if the constant internecine battles continue both the party and his political future are going down the tubes.
He posed a reasonable argument that Mr Trimble must puncture in the coming weeks if he is to retain his leadership. "We don't need a Churchill any more," said our source. By that he meant that Mr Trimble, like the second World War prime minister, through intellect, tenacity and courage, persuaded most of his party to adopt a long-term political and civic view and stick with the agreement.
Now, however, was the time for a change of leader, time for attempts at healing deep wounds. With Mr Trimble in charge, his opponents would keep attacking him, he said, and "when you have the Ulster Unionist Party in turmoil the agreement is going nowhere".
That someone else, as far as this unionist was concerned, is Sir Reg Empey, formerly a minister in the Assembly, currently a Belfast councillor, and seen in the past as Mr Trimble's chief lieutenant.
Sir Reg and Mr Donaldson, in some form of leadership axis, have been named as the "dream team" to reunite the party. This source, however, felt that Mr Donaldson must don the mantle of Michael Heseltine, the man who wielded the knife against Margaret Thatcher but because of this act of perceived treachery could not take the leadership. "There can only be one leader and that would have to be Reg," he said.
The source believed that up to 70 per cent of the party could unite behind Sir Reg, and his pro-agreement stance which, up to now at least, has been the same as Mr Trimble's, and that the diehard anti-agreement 30 per cent could be managed.
Within the Trimble camp there appears to be a growing suspicion that Sir Reg is waiting to pounce, notwithstanding his insistence that he is not trying to undermine Mr Trimble by his attempts at mediation, now put on hold, between the Trimble-Donaldson blocs of the party. "I think Number 10 would be amazed if we ditched a party leader, a Member of Parliament and a Nobel prize winner for a Belfast councillor who has the same policy as David Trimble. It does not make sense," said one Trimble supporter of the Empey threat.
The same Trimble supporter also made the point that Mr Donaldson would not easily yield ground to Sir Reg. His chief point, however, was that there was no middle ground between Trimble and Donaldson, that that struggle overrode all thought of compromise.
Recalling a famous line from P.J. Mara when, against the odds, Charlie Haughey survived a leadership heave, he said: "You can't have two leaders and two voices. Uno duce, una voce. And that's David Trimble." Fighting talk but it's still a shaky time for Mr Trimble. A few unpredictable weeks ahead.