IN a weekend statement attempting to justify her decision to resign as a DUP party officer, the Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart again called on her colleague Emma Little-Pengelly to stand down as deputy first minister over the Drumcree issue, and made the extraordinary claim that she had “never seen unionism so united”.

Ms Lockhart must not have watched the much-discussed episode of The View on BBC1 last Thursday, when the leaders of the three main unionist parties clashed angrily with each other for almost half an hour in the course of a studio debate.

The bitterness of the exchanges was striking, with the senior representatives on completely different wavelengths, and much of the sharpest animosity being directed by Jim Allister of the TUV against Gavin Robinson of the DUP.

Ms Lockhart, despite her assertion that unionism........

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