For many months now, I have wrestled with the words and retorts made by senior Westminster based DUP politicians who, in response to the Windsor Framework, seem to ignore completely the lived reality of the majority of people across Northern Ireland.

As people struggle daily to pay rising mortgage bills, increased energy costs and tighten their already constricted belts to pay for costly childcare, one DUP MP said that a return to Stormont “could be an ice age away”.

As winter looms and the temperature dips I am quite sure that our underpaid and overworked health care workers, teaching & support staff and many others on the front lines will take no comfort from words given by those not prepared to share the pain.

This week we have heard that a deal may be imminent. Sadly, just like clockwork, those usual voices, who having been at the fore of the “get Brexit done” campaign and at the table for subsequent negotiations with the ERG and Conservative Government between 2017-19, seek to make this potential move forward both unworkable and fatalistic without speaking to the wider damage being wrought to the pro-Union family and Northern Ireland. The suggestion that there will be “no second chance” is at best a red herring and potentially defeatist.

Unionists should never rest in building the case for prosperity and well-being in Northern Ireland. We should never cease to engage, encourage and maximise opportunity. We must also never cease to challenge the unacceptable and, in doing so, ensure that there is no negative impact on the people of Northern Ireland.

Whilst all Unionists agree that changes to the Windsor framework are still necessary to ensure that restraints in trade between NI and GB (and vice versa) are removed and that future divergence must be stopped, sadly, I am becoming more convinced that there are some who would see us lose an opportunity to make Northern Ireland the centre of prospect and prosperity which surely would be one of the greatest tools in our belt to persuade those up for grabs in any constitutional query.

I know that there are those opposed to power sharing and I know that there are those who would be content with a land border as a result of Brexit, but what has been missing from the rhetoric of some DUP MP's and Peers is what is their 'Plan B' or bottom line?

I for one will not assist them in making Northern Ireland an iceberg or last-chance saloon.