Ken Maginnis is in the living room of his fortified home in Dungannon expounding why there is a contest for people's hearts and minds that must be fought and won by unionists, why Sinn Fein must be in the review, and why there can be no give on the weapons issue.
We're chatting shortly after he engaged in a verbal scrap with Jonathan Bell, a young UUP councillor from Craigavon, on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme. Mr Bell's tone is one of having to chide this senior unionist more in sorrow than in anger for campaigning to keep Sinn Fein in the process, despite allegations that the IRA murdered Charles Bennett and attempted to smuggle guns from Florida. Mr Maginnis's line is: who is this upstart?
There is an impression of the front-row forward about the MP. A Dungannon RFC alickadoo, he deals in passion, aggression and political nous.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan's declaration yesterday that the IRA murdered Charles Bennett will increase the pressure for Sinn Fein to be excluded from the review, but Mr Maginnis still wants to eyeball them in that enterprise.
After the radio interview involving Mr Bell, he says: "Sometimes the people who get the greatest headlines are the most thoughtless and unconstructive stereotype unionists. Jonathan Bell has presumed without earning his spurs to criticise those who have the job of leading Ulster unionism. Those are the people who are most irksome in Ulster unionism. Those are the people who have come and gone over the years. They are the sprinters, not the stayers in politics."
Mr Bell will contradict that portrayal but certainly there's no doubting Mr Maginnis's capacity for the long haul, nor his willingness to try and get his party to follow a complex political plot. At 61 he remains a big, growling, energetic, bearish figure. Throughout the past nine days he held the line on the tactical necessity to have Sinn Fein involved in the review. A number of unionists disowned the view but Mr Maginnis wasn't for budging.
The irony, when one steps aside from the UUP in-fighting, is that Mr Maginnis is as rigid as the most unbending unionist on the issue of decommissioning. This was strongly evident during the negotiations leading to the rejected Way Forward document.
Some wondered if this was a hard-cop, soft-cop routine where finally he would retreat to the background and Mr Trimble would do a deal on the basis of what the two governments and the other pro-Agreement parties viewed as an implicit commitment from the IRA to disarm.
There was no deal. Mr Maginnis, it seems, was not bluffing. Some UUP members, a small minority perhaps, thought he had been too aggressive on the issue, that he was leaving the party no room for manoeuvre come September 6th. "I think Ken rather has a fetish about the guns issue," one of his colleagues said.
Mr Maginnis served in the B-Specials and later in the Ulster Defence Regiment. During these troubles he saw several of his good friends die at the hands of the IRA. His constituency suffered terribly: the Enniskillen massacre, attacks on Protestants in Border areas, shootings and bombings.
So, it's personal? "No, I would totally refute that. If it were a personal issue then in fact I would not be able to countenance meetings with Sinn Fein and killers sitting opposite the table from me."
He has mentioned in the past about the IRA being defeated. Is that at the core of his personal politics, vindication through IRA surrender? "I have never said, and I have never heard the most intransigent unionist saying, we want a surrender from the IRA. What we all want is a metamorphosis which recognises as futile their late-19th-century, narrow, irredentist nationalism and substitute for it democratic republicanism.
"Martin McGuinness is the only one who talks about surrender, and by doing that is reinforcing this notion that somehow there is an ulterior motive."
Just as Seamus Mallon will not accept David Trimble's difficulties and offer him some slack, neither will Mr Maginnis sympathise with the hardline constituency problems facing Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness by throwing some lifeline on guns. "I accept Gerry Adams may not be able to bring 101 per cent of Sinn Fein/IRA with him, but that does not excuse him in any way for not making an effort to do what is right."
He also rejects the argument that tactically unionists had made a mistake in rejecting the Way Forward paper because it put them on the back foot and gave republicans the high ground. The contention that republicans would probably have considerable nationalist sympathy if the review collapsed over decommissioning, because many would blame unionists for the breakdown, reflects on nationalism, not unionism. There is a principle at stake.
"If ordinary constitutional republicans in preference to recognising and understanding the unionist position are prepared to blindly and subjectively cling to the easier option - republicanism as portrayed by Sinn Fein/IRA - then there is remarkably little hope for peace on this island."
Behind the face of nationalists seeking accommodation with unionists he suspects a baser picture. He quotes a comment the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, made to him to support that view. "Bertie told me, `Look, I have done what I can. I have come under huge criticism from my party for being as hard as I have been on the IRA. And I have come under similar criticism from half my Dail party. And indeed from members of my own Cabinet'.
"That astonished me because the message we hear from constitutional republicanism is, `We have voted to repudiate terrorism', and yet the Taoiseach himself is admitting there is an intolerance on the part of constitutional republicanism to his hardline criticism of the IRA."
The various arguments over the Way Forward document are rehearsed. The two governments, Mr Mallon, and even some unionists, contended that unionists had nothing to lose and everything to gain by testing whether the IRA was truly committed to decommissioning. But Mr Maginnis will have none of it. "There was no seismic shift, and that is endorsed by the intelligence services, in the North and South," he says. The US gun-smuggling operation and the murder of Charles Bennett further substantiate his position, he adds.
As for the argument that had unionists taken the risk the Florida guns might never have been used and Mr Bennett could still be alive, "I think that is dubious in the extreme."
He is non-specific about the chances of the review succeeding, although his general train of argument and his demeanour would tend to the negative.
Mr Maginnis is prepared to make one concession on weapons. He says he could live with an IRA commitment to begin the "process" of decommissioning even if the process meant actual decommissioning might not start until a few weeks after the executive was up and running. "But decommissioning would have to be completed by May 22nd next year."
But there must be prior IRA commitment, he adds, and whether that could satisfy what appears implicit in the republican position - the notion of voluntary disarmament to counter any claims of IRA surrender - is pretty problematic.
Ahead of the review Mr Maginnis is trying to ensure that unionists don't do what they often do best, losing the propaganda battle. He, in tackling colleagues like Mr Bell, argues that the Northern question is too complex to be dealt with in black and white. The impression must not be given that unionists, to quote Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness, "don't want a Catholic about the place", he says.
What London, Brussels, Washington think does matter. "If we lose sight of that we contribute to the salami slicing of Northern Ireland's position, and we betray the aspirations of society as a whole."