So what about Labour cosying up to the DUP?

Over-excited Labour MPs haven’t been able to find enough buckets to use as they pour scorn on the deal struck by theresa May with the Ulster Unionists to prop up her government.

But they would be wise to stop — or they could be accused of gross hypocrisy.

For the fact is that this ‘grubby’ deal between the tories and the dUP simply mirrors similar ones that their own party is said to have tried when Gordon Brown was leader.

immediately after the 2010 General election, when david cameron’s tories won most seats but not an overall majority, Brown sought a deal with the dUP to keep Labour in power, according to Nigel dodds, currently the dUP leader in the commons.

the talks quickly collapsed, Labour’s last chance of remaining as the government folded and cameron managed to form a coalition with the Lib dems.

What’s more, there’s a suggestion that Brown’s Labour government had already done a lesser parliamentary deal with the dUP.

in 2008, it won a commons vote by 315 to 306 to extend the detention of terror suspects to 42 days. the Bill passed with the support of nine dUP MPs.

then Shadow Home Secretary david davis claimed Labour had ‘bought the vote’. Labour denied it. But a year later, it was announced Bombardier Aerospace was investing £500 million in Northern ireland, securing 800 jobs at the Shorts factory in the east Belfast constituency of then dUP leader Peter robinson.

robinson later explained: ‘they [the government] came up with the goods in terms of the Bombardier deal . . . which was the largest single investment in Northern ireland. they bent over backwards to help us.’

Labour MPs baying now about the tory/dUP deal would do well to read up on this episode.