It was more than a little rich to hear the rebel Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside claim yesterday (Wednesday) that any disciplinary action taken against him would wreck his party.
Most observers thought that was exactly what Mr Burnside and his colleagues Jeffrey Donaldson and Martin Smyth were trying to accomplish when they refused to accept the unionist whip at Westminster from last June in the latest dispute linked to the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr Burnside is now suggesting that the whole affair should simply be forgotten about, in the interests of unionist unity.
The reality is that, while all political parties have their internal differences, the course Mr Burnside has embarked on has been guaranteed to perpetuate the divisions within Ulster Unionism.
After the Good Friday Agreement was overwhelmingly ratified by the Irish electorate, north and south, five years ago, and endorsed by the Ulster Unionist Council, all sections of society were entitled to expect that the most basic issues relating to political progress had been resolved.
The Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, has subsequently sought the continued backing of his party's ruling body on more than 10 occasions and won the vote, albeit by some narrow margins, each time.
However, a minority group has continually refused to accept what is indisputably the majority verdict within the Ulster Unionist Party and instead constantly pushed for the removal of Mr Trimble.
Although Mr Trimble's prospects have been undermined by the failure of republicans to face their responsibilities over decomm-issioning and policing, he finds himself in charge of a party which is rapidly losing credibility.
Nationalists are reduced to guessing which direction Ulster Unionism may be heading in. But the DUP, which claimed to oppose the Good Friday Agreement while simultaneously exploiting all of its political benefits, believes the public feuding will allow it to surge ahead of its main rival.
Mr Trimble may have been frustrated by his party's archaic structures, which enabled his internal opponents to launch legal challenges to his decisions, but allowing three of his MPs to go on defying his authority cannot be an option.
Much will be at stake when the next meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, scheduled for mid-September, gets under way.
The great difficulty is that public cynicism about all aspects of the political process has already reached an advanced stage.
