Watch: Alliance MP Stephen Farry constituents 'see him as a Sinn Fein cuckoo in a unionist nest' says Sammy Wilson in the House of Commons

The East Antrim DUP stalwart was speaking a few minutes after an extremely animated speech by party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, in which the DUP chief – in a voice sometimes almost cracking with emotion – defended his own unionist credibility and that of his fellow DUP members.

• Full story on Sir Jeffrey’s speech, and video, here

The topic under debate in the chamber was the DUP’s possible return to Stormont, and the prospects of a new election in the event that this doesn’t happen.

Mr Farry said: “One aspect of the situation we find ourselves in is the story of Brexit... It is about how the DUP backed a hard Brexit and did not reconcile that with the implications for Northern Ireland in terms of the special arrangements that had to be put in place.

"There is no perfect solution to the challenges that Brexit poses to Northern Ireland. The Windsor Framework offers perhaps the best approach to putting a square peg into a round hole, short of a wider reassessment of the UK’s overall relationship with the European Union…

"The DUP has been allowed to essentially hold the process to ransom with impunity over the past 12 months in terms of blocking the Executive.”

Mr Wilson spoke a few minutes later, and began by issuing fresh condemnation of the Windsor Framework (which the DUP argues does not remove the post-Brexit Irish Sea border).

"It is not acceptable to Unionists in Northern Ireland who have gone through terrorist campaigns, and shown resolve in terrorist campaigns, in order to stay within the United Kingdom,” he said.

"We have had all kinds of pressure put on us. We have had threats. We have even heard more of those threats today, such as: ‘If you don’t go down the route of getting a resolution here, we will have to re-examine the Belfast agreement’...”

This a reference to the recent implied threat from senior Tory MP Robert Buckland that the Irish government will have a role in the government of Northern Ireland if government does not come back:

• Watch: 'Shrinking violet' Sammy Wilson savages Robert Buckland in Commons over ‘devious, deceitful and dishonest’ threat of Dublin role in Northern Ireland's affairs

Mr Wilson added: “I listened to the honourable member for North Down (Stephen Farry), and it is little wonder that many people in North Down regard him now as a Sinn Fein cuckoo in the constituency nest, because he talks and argues so much as though he were coming from a Sinn Fein position, rather than from the position of a constituency that is predominantly Unionist.

“We have had the threats, including that there might be a change in the agreement that would take away the consensus, or that we might have direct rule that involves the Irish Republic, even though there is no provision for that in the Good Friday Agreement.

"Of course, the Secretary of State has sought to say this at times – or through surrogates. I notice that the honourable member for North Down echoed the words of the chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (Mr Buckland) in threatening that there could be big change that would be detrimental to the Union if we did not come to an agreement quickly.”

North Down has always been solidly unionist in complexion, and the only serious political blocs in the constituency are unionists and the Alliance Party.

Unionist dominance was almost upset in the 2019 General Election though when Alliance’s Stephen Farry roughly quadrupled the party’s share of the vote at a stroke (see chart).