David Trimble's emergence as crucial arbiter of the Ulster Unionist Party's position on the Good Friday Agreement is explained less by "Pauline conversion" than a chameleon-like ability to survive in changing times. The empirical evidence of his pragmatism is demonstrated recurrently in this comprehensive outline from the Ireland correspondent of the Observer. McDonald microscopically examines the swings and arrows of the Trimble fortunes before and after the establishment of the uneasy detente on which the political future of the entire island of Ireland has come to pivot. Trimble is a man of apparent contradictions. His conduct may best be explained by reference to his undisputed hero in the period leading up to partition, Sir James Craig. Trimble in his own published analysis of the foundations of Northern Ireland, sees Craig as the true champion of unionism to the detriment of Sir Edward Carson, "an act of heresy for any unionist", as McDonald claims. Dublin-born Carson, an integrationist, was bitterly opposed to the partition of Ireland. Craig - like Trimble, who came to remould his "orthodoxy" after his election as UUP leader - became the arch-pragmatist, realising that unionism would have to cut its losses and take what it could get in Ulster.
It is interesting in more enlightened times to reflect that the Trimble analysis appeared when it was still strictly taboo for unionists to talk to republicans. Yet even then the loyal Orangeman who was seen on screens around the world to trip the light fantastic with Ian Paisley at Drumcree - thereby rendering himself ideologically suspect to everyone of nationalist hue - was able to vindicate Craig's decision to enter into discussions with Michael Collins during the War of Independence and later with Eamon de Valera, as taoiseach. Colman Cassidy