Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Mr Quentin Davies appears at loggerheads with party leader Mr Iain Duncan Smith over proposals for a Westminster pact between the Conservatives and Ulster Unionists.
Mr Duncan Smith and the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, are understood to have agreed the desirability of such a pact "in principle" during one-to-one talks in the Leader of the Opposition's House of Commons office two weeks ago.
While Mr Trimble has expressly ruled out a formal merger between the two parties, at least at this time, he is known to have consulted his fellow MPs about an arrangement under which they would take the Tory whip and a number of them would serve in the shadow cabinet.
However, in a speech to Conservatives in East Belfast on Tuesday night, Mr Davies reportedly insisted: "There is no truth whatsoever in the report that an agreement has been reached on a merger, or any other structured relationship, between the UUP and the Conservative Party. Nor are there any plans afoot for that."
Mr Davies added: "Of course, I cannot predict or prejudge the future, and I wish to exclude nothing. But I would be surprised if, in the present state of political flux in Northern Ireland, we were to receive a formal and considered proposition from any Northern Ireland party."
That surprised both Conservative and Ulster Unionist sources yesterday, as did Mr Davies's outspoken criticism of a "truly astonishing failure of political leadership" on both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland.
According to one Westminster source who did not wish to be named: "That seems a bit unwise given the extent to which all sides have actually moved in the last 10 years. It's also a bit rich coming from someone who has previously announced the end of the bipartisan policy at Westminster."
Having originally welcomed the appointment of a pro-European to the Northern Ireland portfolio, Irish Government representatives have been highly critical of Mr Davies's interventions during critical moments in the peace process. British ministers, from Mr Tony Blair down, have also frequently criticised the Tory spokesman for refusing to give the government the same degree of backing Labour granted the previous Conservative administration in earlier stages of the process.
Supporters of the proposed Conservative/Unionist realignment last night suggested that Mr Davies's comments reflected irritation at being "out of the loop" on the Duncan Smith/Trimble talks.
According to one insider: "He has a bit of a fixation that the Conservatives should not be tied to David Trimble's position. And, of course, he sees himself as being a player in his own right and capable of standing above the fray and appealing to all sides."
Mr Davies's remarks in Belfast contained a strong hint of that in his assertion that there should be scope for a UK-wide non-sectarian party "to try to give a leader to the people of Northern Ireland as a whole".