Last week MEP Jim Allister launched his so-called Traditional Unionist Voice as a movement rather than an anti-agreement unionist party.
This is a means of testing the waters. Too often smaller anti-agreement parties have risen and prospered for a time only to fall flat on their faces. Potential support needs to be gauged before taking the plunge to a fully fledged political party.
Another advantage in a movement is that some supporters could retain membership of a larger unionist party. There is nothing new in this and in the early days not only did some UUP members take their politics from Ian Paisley's Sunday evening sermons, at least one is known to have managed to remain in both parties at the same time.
Jim Allister's caution makes sense because the DUP and Sinn Féin are now the establishment and could prove well nigh impossible to shift. Then again, this also creates an impulse towards urgency because the unlikely alliance is likely to bed down further.
The big players on the world stage want the alliance to remain firm, at least in the short term. The appearance of Paisley and McGuinness with Bush and Clinton will help solidify the Chuckle Brothers' relationship further.
Relatively few people want power sharing to fail despite the hurt and incredulity among former supporters.
Paisley confused them by conveying the impression that he would never share power with Sinn Féin while at the same time working towards that very end. His fundamentalism seems to have been skin deep when faced with opportunities to achieve power and mix with the great and the good – but that's politics.
Around 1970 an academic who was working with Brian Faulkner said Paisley would take a more constructive stance if given the top job. This made sense, although sharing power with Martin McGuinness seems to fly in the face of Paisley's varying stances down the years.
And yet many of his believing supporters will follow willy-nilly, assuming their leader can do no wrong. Others realise that, fallible though he be, Paisley is possibly the only realistic hope of keeping us on the road to recovery.
On the other hand Jim Allister has much going for him and should find it relatively easy to expose the hypocrisy of former colleagues who seek to justify all they condemned in the UUP. However, Sinn Féin could again rescue its partners by dismantling the Army Council and shelving the unity agenda.
The debate has little to do with 'traditional unionism'. Paisley never represented traditional unionism but rather a combination of reaction against change and American-style fundamentalism.
During his visit to the United States last week he may have found time to look up old right-wing associates and potential new fundamentalist friends, although they might find the new Paisley somewhat problematic.
There is a great gulf between what Paisley once offered and what the DUP now represents. Until recently the DUP remained essentially a Protestant Unionist Party quite openly displaying sectarian and fundamentalist credentials. Paradoxically however, when the party was first founded the DUP was meant to be on the left on social issues.
This uneasy leftist stance became apparent many years ago when I came into contact with a DUP branch officer who was a genuine socialist and his friend, "on the margins of the party", who claimed to be Marxist Leninist. Any semblance of this kind of thinking now appears to have been abandoned along with much of the religious rant, although the latter can still be called upon when the going gets tough.
The claim that the DUP represents the Protestant working class now rings hollow but shedding traditional stances has ameliorated the harsher edge of Paisleyite rhetoric.
Red Sammy can now dub Dawn Purvis "Red Dawn" while the Big Man reportedly calls her Communist and Iris Robinson refers to the UUP minister of health's "natural left-leaning tendencies" because he demands more money from Peter for the health service.
Ecumenism – once the great Satan in Paisleyite eyes – is seldom mentioned again, illustrating how far the DUP has deserted its own leftist and fundamentalist pretentions.
Paisleyism was always an opponent of traditional unionism and Jim Allister faces a major uphill task trying to uncover precisely what DUP unionism represents, let alone attempting to resuscitate what are essentially mythical unionist traditions.
The new Ulster calls for new thinking – not a return to old ways long past their sell-by date.
