She judged her audience well and spoke of the need to improve the contacts and dialogue between both parties. What has become clear over the past few months is that the DUP and Sinn Fein are prepared to gang up in the Executive and in the Assembly chamber to force their joint will upon the smaller parties. Formal cooperation between the SDLP and UUP could be a useful counterbalance to that axis and Mrs Ritchie seemed keen to explore it. She didn't, however, mention the potential intervention and impact of Fianna Fail on local affairs, nor whether the SDLP would prefer that option to a deal with the UUP. Nevertheless, the delegates liked what they heard.


The DUP has decided not to have a conference this year; which is a pity, because I liked the idea of a Sinn Fein minister being invited to address a conference full of former Ulster Unionists who had abandoned David Trimble because they thought he was too comfortable with Martin McGuinness!


Of more importance, though, was the meeting of the UUC on the Friday evening, when delegates overwhelmingly (only two votes against) endorsed a package of reforms which will lead to the most sweeping institutional and organisational changes in the party's history. There is still work to be done to complete the process and implement the reforms; but the UUP is better placed now, than it has been for a generation, to become an effective, disciplined, party political machine.


The UUP has a long way to go and a high mountain to climb in terms of proving to a wider electorate that it is, as Sir Reg put it, "back in business and here to stay"; but at least it proved that it could still attract almost 600 people to a weekend of political activity. That's no mean achievement for a party that was written off by the media in the wake of the 2005 and 2007 election results.



What it must not do, though, is allow the success of the weekend to lure it into a sense of complacency. The fact that there isn't likely to be an election of any sort before the early summer of 2009, gives the party the chance to prove that it really is serious about survival and revival. It mustn't waste the opportunity. It needs to keep up the momentum and finish the job it started last April.


Meanwhile, back at the Assembly, the crypto-Stalinist approach adopted by the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition during the introduction of the budget and Programme for Government, demonstrated, yet again, the absence of genuine accountability. In other words, how do you challenge a budget which is little more than a divvy-up of less-than-expected cash, or a legislative programme which is uninspired and driven by civil servants rather than ideology?


Way back in October 1998 (and at regular intervals since then) I wrote about the lack of Opposition and encouraged debate on how it could be achieved. Some people, albeit very belatedly and for slightly different reasons, have reached the same conclusion. The difficulty, however, is that a move to Opposition in advance of the debate would probably leave them in a much worse position than they are at the moment.


There are no structures for Opposition in the Assembly and the mere act of designating yourself the "Official Opposition" wouldn't make a button of difference. An Opposition needs a raft of alternative policies; they can't just be made on the hoof. By definition, an Opposition would have to oppose aspects of the PfG. Which aspects, though? An Opposition can't just consist of the UUP in isolation, for that would look like the cocoon approach to politics. For an Opposition to offer a credible alternative to the DUP/Sinn Fein coalition, the Opposition itself must be a coalition. Yet, if that is the case, what happens to a UUP-DUP electoral pact in places like South Belfast; and would you have a situation in which the UUP-SDLP would have a common manifesto?


The task of creating an Official Opposition is going to be a difficult one, not least because neither the DUP nor Sinn Fein will be keen on the idea. The present arrangements allow for incompetence and poor government to be cloaked by the very shaky claim of a collective responsibility; put bluntly, you can't really pin the tail on the worst donkey.


The formal battle would have to begin in the Assembly and Executive Review Committee, which has an inbuilt DUP/Sinn Fein majority. As it stands, legislative change would be required to create an Official Opposition and some of that change would have to be channelled through Westminster. The public and the media will have to be won over to the cause, if only to persuade them that the UUP and SDLP aren't just whingeing because they are now the smaller parties. Indeed, it might also be a good idea if the parties interested in formal Opposition began negotiations.

So yes, I am a very longstanding advocate of Opposition in the Assembly. But the real merits of the case will be fundamentally undermined if either the UUP or SDLP took a unilateral decision to depart from the Executive and leapt into what would be, to all intents and purposes, a no man's land. You cannot seriously or credibly fight the case for Opposition by pretending to be it, before it even exists. And that's precisely why the DUP didn't go into Opposition in December 1999.

The arguments in favour of an Official Opposition are overwhelming. In the light of the carve-up of office and gang-up mentality of the two largest parties, the need for an Official Opposition is overwhelming. At present, however, I'm not convinced that some of the born-again advocates of Opposition fully understand the long term ramifications and implications of the move. That's the debate that now needs to take place.