Samuel Wilson is a Northern Irish politician who has served as Chief Whip of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the House of Commons since 2019.

Wilson aroused controversy as a DUP councillor in June 1985 when he issued a threat to Ulsterbus vehicles and staff after it refused to transport unionists to a demonstration in Castlewellan, which ended in violence.

The following day Social Democratic and Labour Party MP Seamus Mallon accused Wilson of supporting random killings, intimidations and "other outrages".

"[13] In September 1988 Sammy Wilson was named in a Canadian court as having hosted Canada-based gunrunners in Belfast City Hall in October 1986 when he was Lord Mayor.

Another Canadian man named during the trial, Bill Taylor, was imprisoned in Canada on an extradition warrant for charges of conspiring to import arms into the United Kingdom.

Some areas with strong Catholic/nationalist majorities near the Irish border would be handed over to the Republic of Ireland, and those Catholics left stranded in the "Protestant state" would be "expelled, nullified, or interned".

[14] In April 1994 amidst controversy over a large-scale operation by the British Army to overhaul the British security forces base in the predominantly nationalist village of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, acting as DUP press officer Wilson commented Unionists should be heartened that, despite the pressure from Dublin, the SDLP and the Catholic Church, there is still some will to make republican communities pay some of the cost of their support for IRA terrorism...

[16][17]In July 1994, Wilson and DUP MP Peter Robinson were pallbearers at the funeral of UDA member Ray Smallwoods, who served half of a 15 year sentence for the attempted murder of Bernadette McAliskey in 1981.

Their appearance was widely criticised; days earlier the LVF had murdered two men, Philip Allen and Damien Trainor - one a Protestant, one a Catholic - in a bar in Poyntzpass, County Armagh in an indiscriminate sectarian attack.

[19] On 24 April 1998, Sammy Wilson and DUP councillor Jack McKee shared a platform with self-styled pastor Clifford Peeples, a member of the LVF and leader of the Orange Volunteers, at an anti-Good Friday Agreement rally in Antrim town.

[21] In the 2003 Assembly election, Wilson stood successfully in the East Antrim constituency, alongside fellow DUP candidates George Dawson and David Hilditch.

This momentum was carried through to the 2005 Westminster Election on 5 May, which saw Wilson defeat Roy Beggs of the Ulster Unionist Party, to become Member of Parliament for East Antrim with 49.6% of the vote.

In March 2016, during a BBC Spotlight episode discussing the implications of the EU referendum, Wilson was recorded agreeing with a member of the public who said that they wanted to leave the European Union and "get the ethnics out".

[25] In 2018, he argued against the suspension of his party colleague Ian Paisley Jr from the Westminster Parliament, after he was punished for accepting family holidays paid for by the government of Sri Lanka while speaking in favour of the regime in the House of Commons.

[31] This, along with his opposition to the creation of an independent environmental protection agency and his support for nuclear power, led the Green Party to condemn Wilson's "deeply irresponsible message" and give him the 'Green Wash' award for being the MLA most likely to damage the environment.

Wilson's beliefs on climate change have been likened to "a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer" by John Woods of Friends of the Earth, who added that "Ironically, if we listen to him Northern Ireland will suffer economically as we are left behind by smarter regions who are embracing the low carbon economy of the future".

[31] Wilson came under renewed criticism in February 2009 when he blocked the broadcast of climate change advertisements on television, calling them part of an "insidious propaganda campaign".

In that time, we have been robbed of our money, our fishing grounds have been violated, our farmers have been destroyed and the EU Court of Justice has run over the rights of victims while upholding those of terrorists".

[46] Shortly after this statement, Arlene Foster formally announced the Democratic Unionist Party's intention to campaign for a "Leave" vote in the Brexit referendum.

[48][49] As the DUP's Brexit spokesman, Wilson said in January 2019 it was "perfectly possible" that Theresa May would be able to negotiate a revised withdrawal agreement which removes the Northern Ireland backstop.

[50] On 29 January 2019, during a debate in the House of Commons, Wilson responded to a suggestion from Scottish National Party MP Ian Blackford that a no-deal Brexit could lead to food shortages and that many supermarkets "warn of not having sufficient supplies and of shelves lying empty",[51] by saying people could simply "Go to the chippy"[52][53] instead.

[54] However, on 11 January 2021, during an Economic Update from the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons, Wilson complained that in Northern Ireland "supermarket shelves are empty and thousands of people are being sent letters from suppliers in England saying that neither they personally nor their businesses will any longer be supplied with goods"[55] as a direct result of Brexit.

[63][64] A subsequent statement by Chief Executive of the UK National AIDS Trust Deborah Gold asserted that the "misinformed response" from Wilson was the result of "prejudice".