Fallout from DUP's return to Stormont could 'tear unionism and loyalism apart'

​The loyalist activist said the number of DUP parliamentarians clearly not in support of party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s decision is a cause for concern.

"If he can't convince Nigel Dodds and Sammy Wilson, Willie McCrea, Carla Lockhart and Paul Girvan, Ian Paisley, how can unionist grass roots trust anything he says?" he said.

Mr Bryson said that if all of the DUP MLAs toe the party line on the Stormont return on Saturday, then "it is those people who bear the consequences for the constitutional damage which flows from this".

He added: "I think we have to see how the coming weeks go. I think what the Donaldson deal has done – it will tear unionism and loyalism apart, such are the strongly held feelings on all sides of this.

"While Jeffrey has won the endorsement of the Julian Smiths and the NIO, and all of the establishment that once railed against unionism, he hasn't even convinced his own party.”

David McNarry, a former UUP MLA for Strangford and long-serving Orange Order member, said the older unionists he had spoken to in recent days had a “let’s wait and see attitude” to the Stormont return, while the younger ones, although saying they were prepared to give the deal “a fair wind,” had also asked: “How many times have we made compromises… that have all been thrown back in our faces?”

He said it was important to remember that the DUP leader has described the political situation as a “work in progress,” but, Mr McNarry added, if progress isn’t made, “then it unwinds what has been done” to restore power-sharing.

Mr McNarry said he sensed that unionists generally would have more of a problem with Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald making her presence felt around Stormont, than with Michelle O’Neill as first minister.

He also said there is a general consensus among unionists that their political representatives “need to be clever” if Sinn Fein use the restored administration, and a republican holding the first minister title to “goad” unionists.