There was never much love lost between the DUP and the UUP but we can expect to see a far greater edge between the two parties when the new arrangement between the UUP and the Conservatives is announced in the coming weeks.
The Tories and UUP are hoping for a radical break from the sectarian politics of the past and aim to put bread and butter issues at the centre of debate. They will argue for the union on the basis of its economic benefits as the strong emotional investment which most unionist voters have placed in the Royal family, the armed forces and other British institutions.
Owen Patterson, Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland envisages a politic al alliance that can bridge the sectarian divide by foregrounding "normal" issues like health and taxation.
Last week he told the South Antrim Ulster Unionist AGM that the DUP and Sinn Féin had a common interest in dividing people along "ethnic" lines.
"One [Sinn Féin] wants to be representatives of the downtrodden Catholic minority that has always been abused by the loyalists and the British military machine. And the other [the DUP] wants us threatened that we are under siege by the Catholic hordes and they will take away our whole civilisation" Patterson argued.
"I am absolutely convinced there is a huge pool of people out there who are put off by that polarisation."
The South Antrim UUP faithful seemed prepared to buy into this vision when Patterson and David Burnside, the UUP candidate, presented it to them last Thursday.
If it is to succeed it has to build on existing support by starting to tap into two other potential pools of votes. The first is the 20% of Catholics who say in polls that they favour the union but who don't vote unionist. The second is the demographic referred to as "the Prods in the garden centre"; people who have turned their back on sectarian politics as a dirty game.
The UUP/Tory alliance plans no deals with the DUP in Fermanagh and South Tyrone or South Belfast to maximise the unionist vote. In fact the seats which are likely to receive the most resources are South Belfast, South Antrim, Upper Bann and North Down, which is currently represented by Lady Hermon, the Ulster Unionists' sole sitting MP.
Hermon has, up to now, made it clear that she prefers Labour to the Tories and it is likely that, if she stands as an independent, she would retain the seat. David Cameron, the Tory leader, has twice to put his case in person and another meeting is planned.
New branding is planned. The Ulster Unionist Party will retain its full name and its separate organisation but the word Ulster will no longer appear on ballot papers. The term being thought of is Conservative and Unionist. Candidates standing under this banner will have to be approved by both parties and to the take the Tory whip in Westminster.
There will also be a new emblem for the new alliance, possibly the stylised green oak tree which represents the Tories, but with a union flag attached to its boughs.
The UUP and Tories are gambling that this is the right time to put some clear blue water between themselves and the DUP. In the June European election the DUP and Sinn Féin will arguing that the most important thing is whether a unionist of nationalist tops the poll.
This line of reasoning has prevailed in the past. It served the Unionist and the Nationalist parties until the 1960s. Many of Patterson's arguments against echo those made by the Northern Ireland Labour Party as it was gradually squeezed out in the pre-troubles era.
The UUP is taking a big gamble that things have moved on.
