UUP starts credible fightback

David Trimble has managed to shirt the focus from guns

When David Trimble announced he would quit as first minister on 1 July if the IRA had not begun to decommission its weapons there was exasperation among nationalists and republicans.

Anti-Agreement unionists saw it as a sign of weakness and closed in for the kill.

Less than two weeks before, yet another watershed election in Northern Ireland however, the Ulster Unionist leader is in much better shape than even his closest colleagues could have hoped for.

This is after all, an election which his critics were insisting would lead to a meltdown in the party with all but a couple of seats being lost.

Fight back

But the story so far suggests the UUP, for all the confused messages of Yes and No at the same time, is fighting back.

For a start, it appears Mr Trimble's resignation threat largely removed decommissioning from the election debate by effectively parking the issue.

His dissidents still don't think he went far enough but the manifesto section on weapons, while described by some as "anemic," is something even William Ross can live with.

Having settled to some degree the dissent within the party in the short term, the Ulster Unionist leader has been free to run the campaign on an issue of his choice - devolution.

Devolution popular

The one constant in all the opinion polls since the new assembly was set up is that people here like devolution.

The DUP has always been by instinct a devolutionist party even in the days when arch-integrationist Enoch Powell vanquished the devolutionists in the UUP.

Devolution has been seen to have brought tangible benefits, is increasingly popular, and, the Yes camp argument runs, you cannot be totally against the Good Friday Agreement when devolution is its primary building block.

That's why Mr Trimble moved from a defensive position on decommissioning to a more pro-active stance on the government of Northern Ireland.

Democratic view

From the UUP's perspective its a much better weapon to use against the anti-agreement camp and puts more of a focus on the DUP's ministerial participation in the assembly executive.

Recent polling suggests a greater acquiescence among unionists in relation to the Agreement and, if that's true, the link with devolution is a telling factor.

Take Roy Beggs who stood on anti-agreement platforms with the DUP leadership throughout the referendum campaign in 1998.

He still doesn't like key elements of the deal struck on Good Friday, particularly the lack of a link between prisoner releases and decommissioning.

But he says a democratic decision was taken by the electorate in favour of the agreement and he is prepared to make it work, particularly devolution.

If that acquiescence works its way into the broader unionist conscience David Trimble might not emerge from the general and local elections as a lamb to the predicted slaughter of the Ulster Unionist Council meeting on 23 June.

West Tyrone battle

Bizarrely, there may even be some positives for the SDLP as a result the first minister's resignation threat.

Brid Rodgers: Voted most popular executive minister in poll

The more talk there is about devolution working then the more Agriculture Minister Brid Rodgers likes it.

The SDLP candidate is locked in a political life and death struggle with Sinn Fein's vice president Pat Doherty in West Tyrone.

A Belfast Telegraph opinion poll this week indicated she was by far the most popular minister in the executive.

Not only was she popular in what was a province-wide survey, her approval rating was highest in the west.

Pat Doherty: Sinn Fein has said he will win West Tyrone

The SDLP election machine is sounding more and more confident about Mrs Rodgers prospects but the only poll that matters is the one on 7 June and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in just as insistent Pat Doherty will win.

Mr Adams left himself no room for movement by categorically stating at his manifesto launch that his party would win West Tyrone.

Waiting in the wings is the outgoing MP in West Tyrone, Ulster Unionist William Thompson, who still hopes to slip through the middle.