Mr David Trimble pitched to put Unionism centre-stage in British politics yesterday when he addressed the Conservative Conference and challenged Mr Tony Blair to extend Labour's organisation to Northern Ireland.
Responding to speculation about moves to restore the formal links between the Conservative and Ulster Unionist parties, Mr Trimble told Conservatives in Blackpool: "There was for a long time a structural relationship between our parties and there is a strong continuing friendship. But this is too big an issue to be approached simply in a sectional way."
Reflecting more broadly Mr Trimble credited the Conservative Party with the decision to organise in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s. But he said that move alone was not enough to break the mould.
"If things are to change, if we are to move from an Irish nationalist to a British pluralist basis of politics, then we need two things. First all the national parties must move. I am sure this party \the Conservatives will do its bit. The problem is Labour," he said.
"There is an element in Labour sympathetic to Irish nationalism who have resisted this. But they must realise that, with the acceptance by the Irish Government and all the Irish nationalist parties, their attitudes must change."
Mr Trimble continued: "If Tony Blair was right when, on his first visit to Ulster as Prime Minister in May 1997, he said to some primary school children there would not be a united Ireland in their lifetime, then Labour has a duty to provide political opportunities for those children throughout their lives."
While Mr Trimble's speech did not publicly advance the issue, it is understood that the new Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, has given his approval to on-going talks designed to establish a closer relationship between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists.
In his first big speech to the Conservative conference as party leader, Mr Duncan Smith insisted there could be "no place for the representatives of terrorists in the government of Northern Ireland", unless republican and loyalist paramilitaries put their weapons beyond use "once and for all".
Britain could not afford to be neutral in the war against terrorism, he said.