“GET him out! Get him out!” calls a middle-aged woman hurrying along a damp Ballymena street in North Antrim. “He’s a muppet!” Ian Paisley, the local Democratic Unionist MP, may be used to this sort of criticism from nationalist opponents. But he now finds himself under fire from both sides of Northern Ireland’s political divide. “I always vote DUP,” says the woman, “but I think he has done wrong—absolutely.”

Her judgment is in line with the House of Commons, which voted in July to impose an unusually severe penalty on Mr Paisley for failing to declare two family holidays to Sri Lanka, paid for by the Sri Lankan government. The trips, which took place in 2013, featured business-class air travel, swanky hotels and helicopter flights, in a package worth at least £50,000 ($65,000). Later, Mr Paisley pressed the British government to oppose a move by the United Nations to investigate human-rights violations in Sri Lanka.

The Commons standards committee, finding him guilty of misconduct in breaking rules on lobbying, recommended his suspension from the House for 30 sitting days, the stiffest penalty imposed since records began in 1949. It will begin when Parliament returns on September 4th. Mr Paisley has also been suspended by his party, pending its own investigation.

His punishment opens the possibility that Mr Paisley may face an electoral contest. Under a recall procedure established in 2015, following a scandal over MPs’ expenses, if an MP is suspended then a by-election can be triggered if 10% of voters in the constituency call for one. Mr Paisley’s suspension presents the first time that voters have had such an opportunity since the power was introduced. Three offices have been opened in North Antrim where voters can register their support for a recall. Sinn Fein, the main nationalist party, is urging its followers to call for a contest.

North Antrim has long been a stronghold for the DUP, and for the Paisley family in particular. The incumbent’s father, also called Ian Paisley, held the seat for 40 years before bequeathing it to his son in 2010. The younger Mr Paisley took it over with a large majority. He would be the favourite to win a by-election, should his opponents muster the signatures needed. He has vowed to run as an independent in the unlikely event that the DUP deselects him.

It is not Mr Paisley’s first time in hot water. In 2008 he resigned as a minister in the Belfast Assembly, saying that months of “unfounded allegations” that he had lobbied for a local property developer had proved “a distraction”. In Westminster he has distinguished himself as one of the highest expenses claimants among MPs. He has said he is “repulsed” by gay people and used the word “chinky” as a synonym for Chinese. He has been fined for contempt of court, and for driving without insurance. None of this has been held against him in North Antrim, where his majority last year increased to more than 20,000.

“It was just a bit of bad luck for him—nothing too bad, I don’t think. Why wouldn’t you take a bit of comfort if you’re offered it?” says one voter in Ballymena. Others have had enough. “What was he thinking of, sitting on a first-class flight with his children behind him? Did he think Sri Lanka was paying for it because of his good looks?” asks a unionist. Still, Mr Paisley will survive any attempt to dislodge him, reckons one Catholic man. “I think he’s too strong in Ballymena,” he shrugs. “I think people will stand by him no matter what. His loyal voters will still vote for him—the Paisley name.”