Analysis: Ulster Unionsists expect the DUP will fail to deliver, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
The DUP and Sinn Féin will parade their 54 Assembly members around Parliament Buildings, Stormont this morning. The SDLP will look on miserably while in some committee room of the big house the 27 Ulster Unionist MLAs will again bicker and squabble over the leadership.
There will be much activity in the building but there will be no devolved government and, it must be said, short of a DUP volte face little expectation of devolved government for a long period ahead. Mr Peter Robinson exhorted people not to be so pessimistic yesterday, but where are the grounds for optimism.
Parliament Buildings is constructed on an eminence that provides a commanding view of Belfast. View the Northern Ireland political scene from this or any other vantage point and there is still no sign of anything on the horizon that offers the prospect of a deal that the DUP and Sinn Féin would endorse.
Mr Robinson on RTÉ and in other interviews talked the talk of reasonable politics yesterday. Trouble is without the permission of the Rev Ian Paisley he can't walk the walk.
Mr Robinson wants an agreement which enjoys the support of unionists and nationalists, and will probably meet the Taoiseach Mr Ahern sometime in the future.
But he won't talk to Sinn Féin until the IRA is disbanded and the weapons are handed up. Hard to imagine P O'Neill doing for the DUP what it wouldn't do for David Trimble without at the very least a vigorous form of devolution in place.
When the review or, depending on your standpoint, the renegotiation of the agreement begins properly in January Mr Robinson will elaborate on his notion of shared devolution. We don't quite know what shared devolution is, but Mr Robinson has hinted it is an arrangement whereby the DUP and Sinn Féin can blissfully ignore each other in some form of diluted executive.
It is equally hard to imagine either Sinn Féin with its 24 seats or the SDLP with 18 agreeing to any type of new arrangement that they would view as little more than a glorified county council.
Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble talks of a possible return electoral bout in six months time. If he overcomes today's latest Jeffrey Donaldson leadership challenge, his chief tactic is to stand back and allow Dr Paisley and Mr Robinson experience first-hand how frustrating and difficult it is to be in the driving seat of Northern Ireland politics.
For 32 years the DUP was the party of opposition - opposed to Sunningdale, power-sharing, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Downing Street Declaration, the Belfast Agreement - but now as lead unionist party, it must deliver.
That's Mr Trimble's line: For eight years he has had to take insult and abuse from the DUP about how he brought unionism and Northern Ireland to a sorry pass. Now let's see can Dr Paisley and Mr Robinson do any better? As one of Trimble's main lieutenants, Mr Michael McGimpsey, told The Irish Times yesterday: "Ian Paisley has said he won't talk to Sinn Féin, he wants the IRA to disband, to hand over all their weapons. He wants to abolish North-South bodies, to get rid of 50:50 police recruitment, to bring back the name of the RUC.
"And he wants to do a lot more. He wants to renegotiate the agreement.
"OK, let's see him do it. It's only right he should have a few weeks or a few months to do it."
Neither Mr Trimble nor Mr McGimpsey believes the DUP will be successful: that is why they would like another Assembly election in six months time when after - as they see it - the failures of the DUP, the lost middle-ground would return to the UUP.
Mr Robinson and his senior strategists argue that, notwithstanding Dr Paisley's veto on any dealings with Sinn Féin through review or renegotiation, a workable new form of devolution can be devised.
The British and Irish governments will do their best to find some form of compromise but the Paisley veto on directly trading with Sinn Féin looms over everything.
One senior unionist made to The Irish Times what appeared a reasonable prediction yesterday. "The DUP will eventually deal with Sinn Féin, but not until after the next Westminster elections which could happen in 18 months' time. It will use that time to win more Westminster seats from the UUP, and to do to the UUP what Sinn Féin is doing to the SDLP. Then when it is the unassailable unionist kingpin it will negotiate with Sinn Féin from a position of strength."
This could be a very big day for Mr Jeffrey Donaldson. Trimble loyalists such as Mr Michael McGimpsey, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, Mr Jim Wilson and even Sir Reg Empey, up to a point, have rallied behind their leader. Odds are then that Mr Donaldson will not succeed today in persuading enough of the party to persuade Mr Trimble to fall on his sword.
What would the point be in Mr Donaldson calling another Ulster Unionist Council meeting to challenge Mr Trimble when, no matter who emerged victorious, the result would again point to a divided party? "I am not ruling anything in and I am not ruling anything out," he said yesterday when asked might he now jump ship with some or all of his four anti-agreement UUP Assembly colleagues and join the DUP.
The logic of Mr Donaldson finally joining the DUP, or establishing an independent grouping of anti-agreement unionists, has never been stronger.