The leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), the once dominant party of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland, has announced he is stepping down after nine years in the job.
Colum Eastwood, 41, the MP for Foyle, told a news conference in his native Derry that the time was right for someone else to take on the role and named his fellow party MP Claire Hanna as his preferred successor.
Eastwood said he would continue to be an active MP and to build the case for a new Ireland. The party, which opposed Brexit, believes the partition of Ireland is coming to an end and is campaigning for a “shared home place for all our people”.
“Now is a big moment for a change for a new Ireland,” Eastwood said. “And I want to make a contribution to that.”
He is the party’s sixth leader and the fifth since the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
His resignation comes just eight weeks after he saw his Westminster majority reduced from about 17,000 to just over 4,000.
For decades the SDLP, which was co-founded by the Nobel peace prize laureate John Hume, was seen as the moderate left-of-centre voice of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
But in 2001, three years after the Good Friday agreement, it started to lose ground to Sinn Féin which is now by far the dominant voice of nationalism.
Although Eastwood was widely praised for his own articulate media performances, the SDLP lost four seats in the 2022 Stormont assembly election, meaning it had to go into opposition because it did not have the numbers to take part in the mandatory coalition.
Last year the party lost 20 seats in local elections. It now has 39.
Acknowledging the SDLP’s declining electoral fortunes, Eastwood told the news conference that “this is a difficult context for the middle ground”.
Possible successors to Eastwood include Hanna and Matthew O’Toole, the party’s leader in Stormont.
Hanna recently said she so opposed Eastwood’s plan in 2019 to enter a partnership with Fianna Fáil south of the border that she considered resigning and forming a new party. The plan came to nothing.
O’Toole previously worked as a civil servant in the Treasury and was a Downing Street spokesperson.
Brian Feeney, a former SDLP councillor and nationalist commentator in the Irish News, said in a recent column that it was time for the party to “find a role commensurate with its size and accept it’s a small party with patchy ageing bourgeois support in niche areas across the north with no USP (unique selling point).”
Coincidentally, the Ulster Unionist party (UUP), the dominant unionist party at the time of the Good Friday agreement, is also looking for a new leader after Doug Beattie announced he was stepping down.
The UUP has also seen its fortunes fade; in its case the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), once led by Ian Paisley, is now the leading voice of unionism.
It is expected that the new leader of the UUP will be Mike Nesbitt, a former television news presenter and current health minister in Northern Ireland. He previously led the party between 2012 and 2017.
During that time, when the UUP and the SDLP were overshadowed by the DUP and Sinn Féin, he said: “Vote me, you get Colum. Vote Colum, you get me.”
When he launched his campaign to become leader of the SDLP in 2015, a young Colum Eastwood made his pitch to party members by telling them he was “fed up losing”.
Now the Foyle MP has stepped down almost a decade later, seemingly bruised by his inability to stop Sinn Fein from continually eating into the shrinking vote of the moderate nationalist party.
Mr Eastwood, 41, resigns as the second longest serving leader of his party. Only his political mentor and fellow Londonderry native John Hume was in charge for a longer period.
However, while Hume’s stature stands unchallenged as a political giant, Mr Eastwood will be remembered by many as an effective communicator and campaigner who ultimately failed to revive the fortunes of the party which once had been the dominant force in nationalism.
Born in Derry in 1983, Mr Eastwood was educated at St Columb’s College. He joined the SDLP when he was still a teenager and was elected to Derry City Council in 2022, later becoming the city’s youngest ever mayor. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011.
When he became leader in 2015, after he challenged the incumbent Alasdair McDonnell, the SDLP had already suffered years of decline.
Worse was to follow in the 2017 general election, when under Mr Eastwood’s leadership, the party suffered a disastrous result in losing all three of its MPs.
However, he rebounded two years later in the 2019 general election when the party recaptured two seats, including Mr Eastwood regaining the Foyle seat in a stunning personal success with a huge majority of more than 17,000 ahead of Sinn Fein. The party held both seats in this year’s General Election.
However, it is at Stormont that the SDLP’s decline has been most keenly felt.
There was a bruising result in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election with the party finishing with just eight seats, meaning it had to go into opposition. Sinn Fein, by contrast, emerged from that election with 27 seats, becoming the first nationalist party to claim the position of First Minister.
Mr Eastwood has mostly avoided controversy during his political career although he was criticised in 2012 when he carried the coffin of a personal friend at a paramilitary-style funeral before he was SDLP leader. Mr Eastwood said he had acted in a personal capacity and would do the same thing again.
Some of his most difficult moments as leader came following his announcement of a formal link with Fianna Fail in 2019. While Mr Eastwood championed the partnership, it was criticised by some within his party.
Claire Hanna, the SDLP’s other big beast and who is tipped to succeed Mr Eastwood as leader, later revealed she had discussions about forming a new political party, such was her opposition to the Fianna Fail deal.
The partnership between the two parties was later quietly dropped.
Last year Mr Eastwood was investigated by police after he took part in a walk to a court hearing with families of Bloody Sunday victims. The PSNI submitted a file to the Public Prosecution Service which said it was not in the public interest to charge the Foyle MP and a number of other people. Mr Eastwood later said the police had apologised to him for the investigation.
During his time as leader, Mr Eastwood frequently excelled during public debates with rival parties and was often praised for his contributions at Westminster.
However, his inability to reverse the electoral decline of his SDLP, combined with accusations that he had failed to modernise party structures or resolve geographical rivalries continued throughout his years in charge.
Mr Eastwood maintained his talent for creating political headlines right to the end of his tenure. This year he refused to attend the White House St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washington DC in protest at the US response to the Gaza-Israel war.
On being sworn in as an MP in July, Mr Eastwood described the oath of allegiance to the King as an “empty formula” which he said he took “under protest”.
Mr Eastwood has indicated he intends to remain as an MP and is expected to continue to contribute to the New Ireland commission he helped to establish to facilitate communications around Irish unity.
After holding its two Westminster seats this year, and with a three-year break ahead in the cycle of Northern Ireland elections, the SDLP’s youngest leader seems to have decided it is the right time for a change at the top.
Attention will quickly turn now to the search for his successor.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has pledged to focus on “making the case for a new Ireland” as he confirmed his resignation after almost a decade in the role.
Speaking at a press conference in Derry on Thursday, the Foyle MP formally endorsed party colleague and fellow MP, Claire Hanna, to succeed him, describing her as “far and away the best option”.
Against the backdrop of the city, Mr Eastwood (41) told journalists it had been “the privilege of his life” to serve the people of Derry, and a “great privilege” to lead the SDLP for nine years after joining the party in his early teens.
As the second longest-serving leader after John Hume, he added that it was time for him to step aside and give someone else a chance to re-energise the party.
Mr Eastwood insisted it was “absolutely” his own decision to leave.
“The bottom line is that this last few years has been a period of immense change across these islands,” he said.
Acknowledging the recent electoral difficulties experienced by the party and the “middle ground generally”, he said the post-Brexit era was a period of instability but also “a moment of opportunity”.
“This is now also a moment, I think, of big change for this island and I for one want to give my full commitment to leading in that space. I want to be a voice for leading for change, to develop a new Ireland,” he added.
“I need to be able to have the space to do that, the time to do that, and some people don’t realise the effort you have to put in to the day-to-day running of a political party.
“The moment now has come for me to step aside and let other people take on that mantle and to allow myself actually to focus on things, primarily to represent the people of this city but also making the case for a new Ireland, the work that I am very passionate about.”
Mr Eastwood became the party’s youngest ever leader in 2015, after a tight leadership contest against Alasdair McDonnell.
Once the biggest nationalist party at Stormont, the SDLP was relegated to fifth place overall in the last Assembly election two years ago – leaving it without a sufficient number of seats to take a ministerial post in the Executive. It is now forms the Opposition, headed by MLA Matthew O’Toole.
Mr Eastwood will formally resign at the party conference on October 5th to allow the new leader to take up post.
Ms Hanna, who is MP for South Belfast and Mid Down, was not present at the press conference in Derry but is understood to have unanimous support within the party, with one veteran saying “there will be no leadership contest this time, it will be a coronation”.
Asked about who his successor might be, Mr Eastwood told reporters he had “absolutely no doubt” Ms Hanna had what it takes to be an SDLP leader.
“If this is my opportunity to be the first person to endorse Claire Hanna I’ll absolutely take it. It’s up to Claire but I hope she puts her name forward.”
Taoiseach Simon Harris paid tribute to Mr Eastwood, describing him a leader who “served with distinction” and with a “progressive, responsible and pragmatic voice on all issues, but especially the challenging ones”.
“As a leader he has been accessible, on the ground and close to his constituents in Derry and the issues that affected them,” he said.
“During Brexit, Colum served the entire island of Ireland with distinction in Westminster with passionate, timely and informed interventions in debates that otherwise neglected the peace process. For that, we all owe Colum a debt of gratitude.”
Stormont First Minister and Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill also paid tribute.
“I want to wish Colum Eastwood and his family well as he steps down as leader of the SDLP,” she said.
“We have worked together as leaders for many years now, to restore the political institutions in the North and in protecting the Good Friday Agreement and the all-island economy against efforts to impose the hardest possible Tory Brexit.
“I look forward to working with his successor as leader of the SDLP in a constructive manner for the good of all our people.”
