Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart quits the DUP over its handling of the Drumcree parade row and will sit as an independent

Carla Lockhart, the Upper Bann MP and one of the DUP's most prominent voices, has walked out of the party in a bitter split over its response to the Drumcree parading dispute, announcing she will now sit as an independent unionist at Westminster.

The resignation deepens a DUP civil war, with Lockhart clashing directly with the party leadership over how it handled the Orange Order standoff.

Drumcree, near Portadown, has long been one of the most sensitive flashpoints in Northern Ireland's parading calendar, and the party's handling of the latest dispute has now cost it one of its most vocal MPs.

Lockhart is the DUP's only sitting MP at Westminster to quit the party in a parading row, leaving the already-diminished unionist bloc further fractured.