He added: “I would not be comfortably seeking a vote knowing that privately I was intending to retire during the mandate.”<\/p>\n
He also said: “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
Nesbitt has been UUP leader since August 2024<\/a> and it was his second stint in the role.<\/p>\n He won the contest in 2012, but quit in 2017 after disappointing assembly election results.<\/p>\n Since then, Robin Swann<\/a>, Steve Aiken<\/a>, Doug Beattie<\/a> and Nesbitt again have been handed the leadership unopposed with no noticeable upturn in the once-mighty party’s fortunes.<\/p>\n A party spokesperson described Nesbitt’s decision to step down as a “pivotal moment”.<\/p>\n “Party officers will shortly outline the leadership selection process, ensuring an inclusive, engaging and seamless transition.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He added: “I would not be comfortably seeking a vote knowing that privately I was intending to retire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-348175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}