Mike Nesbitt is to step down as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).<\/p>\n
Mr Nesbitt said he was stepping down to allow the UUP to select a new politician to lead it into the next elections in 2027, and signalled an intention to retire after the current Assembly term.<\/p>\n
The Strangford MLA and health minister became UUP leader in 2024 for a second time after previous leader Doug Beattie quit following a dispute with party officers.<\/p>\n
Mr Nesbitt, a former broadcast journalist, had previously been party leader between between 2012 and 2017 but quit following a difficult Assembly election result.<\/p>\n
He is the first person to lead the party twice.<\/p>\n
The next Northern Ireland Assembly elections must be held by May 2027.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Mr Nesbitt said: “The next five-year mandate stretches to May 2032, the month I hope to celebrate my 75th birthday.<\/p>\n
“That’s a commitment to full-time politics I just do not feel I can make.<\/p>\n
“And I would not be comfortably seeking a vote knowing that privately I was intending to retire during the mandate.”<\/p>\n
He added: “I retook the leadership to do a short-term job of getting the party match-fit for the forthcoming election campaign.<\/p>\n
“That job is now done so the time is right to select the politician who will lead us into the May 2027 polls promoting our brand of confident, responsible unionism.”<\/p>\n
The UUP said it would outline the process for leadership selection “ensuring an inclusive, engaging and seamless transition”.<\/p>\n
Party chairman Tom Elliott said: “We are deeply grateful to Mike for his decades of service and unwavering dedication to improving our society.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Nesbitt is to step down as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). Mr Nesbitt said he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-223582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}