A female Liberal Democrat MP has accused Nigel Farage of shoving her aside at the state opening of parliament after which one of her male colleagues intervened.

Caroline Voaden gave her account of the incident in May this year after Farage revealed on Wednesday that there had been a “physical altercation” in parliament which meant he had decided to avoid the budget.

Voaden told the Guardian: “He was trying to get out of the chamber and instead of just asking if he could go past, he said: ‘Let me past’. I turned round and said: ‘No, you can wait your turn like everyone else’. He grabbed me by the arm or the shoulder, pushed me to one side and tried to push past me. One of my colleagues tried to stop him because he thought I was going to fall down the stairs. And then we all shuffled down.

“Quite deliberately, he grabbed me by the arm from behind and pushed me to one side so that I fell into a colleague or the wall on the other side.…