Sir Reg Empey has confirmed he will step down as Ulster Unionist leader in the autumn after a disappointing Westminster election campaign.
The politician will leave his position before the party’s annual conference, when a review of the party will take place.
The party that was once the North’s largest now does not have a single MP. Its members face an uncertain future as they decide the best path to regeneration.
Sir Reg spent the last week considering his future after his electoral link-up with the Conservative Party failed to win any Westminster seats.
After a meeting with about 100 members of the party executive, he revealed his intention to resign and took responsibility for any mistakes.
“Following a disappointing election campaign I feel that the party needs to review its position,” said Sir Reg.
“This will be undertaken immediately in the form of a consultation chaired by party deputy chairman Terry Wright.
“I remain confident by the fact that our vote held and indeed increased in most constituencies.”
While acknowledging the failure of Ulster Conservative and Unionists New Force (UCUNF) left Sir Reg with few alternatives other than to go, the UUP‘s former head of communications Alex Kane believes his pending departure was far from inevitable a year ago.
“It‘s ironic in many ways,” Mr Kane said. “In 2005 the UUP was utterly written off, obituaries were penned by everyone. But let‘s not forget a year ago there was talk of UCUNF getting three or four Westminster seats, and maybe eight or nine extra Assembly seats (at the 2011 poll).
“With the TUV (anti-powersharing Traditionalist Unionist Voice party) hoping to take 12 or so seats (at the Assembly) some were even speculating whether UCUNF could become the largest party. But of course it looks very different now.”
Educated at the Royal School Armagh and a graduate of Queen‘s University Belfast, Reg Empey did not always cut the moderate figure he is portrayed as today.
He was a member of the hardline unionist Vanguard movement of the 1970s and fiercely opposed the Sunningdale Agreement — one of the earlier incarnations of powersharing with nationalists — and along with many unionist leaders of the time supported the paramilitary-led Ulster Workers‘ Council strike of 1974 that toppled that Stormont administration.
In the 1980s he took part in the mass demonstrations against the Anglo-Irish Agreement — an accord that gave the Government more influence in affairs north of the border.
By this stage he was an influential member of the Ulster Unionists and as the nascent peace process emerged in the 1990s he played a key role in his party‘s negotiating team.
But if the historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998 represented the high water mark for the UUP, with Lord Trimble honoured with the Nobel prize and Sir Reg knighted, its position as the dominant voice of unionism was not to last.
As the fragile institutions stumbled from one crisis to another the UUP‘s reputation sank while the DUP, which opposed the deal that saw Sinn Féin enter government, mercilessly attacked their fellow unionists from the sidelines.
That swing toward the DUP, confirmed emphatically by the 2005 general election, had gained an almost unstoppable momentum when Sir Reg took over and, according to politics lecturer professor Paul Arthur, it was a decline he was always going to struggle to reverse.
“His job was to steady the ship and in many ways he made sure their fall has not been as precipitate as it might have been,” said the University of Ulster academic.
“He was a solid choice but represented an image of the UUP from another era and not someone who could inspire a new generation.
When the powersharing institutions were restored in 2007 the UUP was left in the unaccustomed position of playing second fiddle in the DUP/Sinn Fein-led executive.
It was a role they have struggled with at times, never more so than during the fraught talks that saw policing powers devolved to the province earlier this year.
They opposed the DUP‘s decision to back the transfer on the grounds the executive was not mature enough. Some branded their attitude as sour grapes, but their more vociferous critics accused them of betraying the progressive reputation earned in the 1990s and abandoning middle ground unionism to the DUP.
With every main party in the UK, including their supposed Conservatives partners, supporting law and order transfer the UUP appeared isolated and marginalised only two months away from a general election.
The effort of two-time Belfast Lord Mayor Sir Reg to turn his party‘s fortunes around in the last five years have been marked by a series of ill-fated link-ups.
He was fiercely criticised in 2006 when he proposed a Stormont pact with the Progressive Unionist Party, the political representatives of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force.
While he insisted it was a bid to bring the PUP in from the cold, detractors branded it a cynical and morally questionable attempt to increase his influence in the chamber.
The proposal was ultimately throw out by the Stormont speaker. But it was his flirtations with the political mainstream, not its margins, that ultimately heralded his demise.
Teaming up with the Conservative Party two years ago represented a high stakes move. While Empey pointed to David Cameron‘s vision of the future, both sides of Northern Ireland‘s political divide harboured historic distrust of the Tories - unionists for Margaret Thatcher‘s part in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and nationalists for Conservative policy throughout the Troubles.
On the face of it, the region appeared far from a fertile untapped resource for the new-look Tories, a fact clear from the party‘s meagre showing when it stood on its own ticket in the 1990s.
But Sir Reg still pinned his political future on an electoral alliance — promising voters a new type of non-sectarian politics that would put Northern Ireland at the heart of the British union.
Professor Arthur believes the pact was ill-conceived from the start. “I don‘t think the Ulster electorate was ever going to link up well with the likes of Cameron and Osborne,” he said.
If it was on shaky ground from the outset, the academic thinks Mr Cameron‘s now infamous remark when he compared the size of the public sector to a former Soviet state was the final nail.
“Whatever way they tried to explain it away, it was a faux pas and added grist to the DUP mill that a vote for the Conservative and Unionists would be a vote for public sector cuts,” he said.
Mr Kane says it was a mix of factors that ultimately did for UCUNF. He cites uncertainty over whether the Tories would actually win the election, delays in agreeing candidates and of course the project‘s cumbersome name.
But he says one over-riding problem undermined Sir Reg‘s bid to attract a new generation of moderate voters with a pluralist brand of conservative unionism.
“The difficulty was that whenever UCUNF encountered any problems there were elements that went straight back to the old ways,” he said.
The one-time spin doctor claims the decision to abandon the pledge to run in all 18 of Northern Ireland‘s constituencies in favour of a local agreement with the DUP to support independent unionist unity candidate Rodney Connor in Fermanagh and South Tyrone was an example of this.
“Whatever way you look at it Fermanagh and South Tyrone was a mistake,” he said. “What message did that send out to pluralist, middle ground voters when the UUP was willing to join up with the DUP in a bid to keep out a nationalist?”
But the difficulties facing the UUP are also in evidence across the unionist spectrum, with the overall pro-union vote dwindling every election.
With the unionist turnout percentage also falling, the trend appears less to do with demography and more with apathy. “It‘s not that unionist voters have become disinterested in politics, it‘s just the message being offered by all the unionist parties simply isn‘t doing anything for them any more,” said Mr Kane.
“Simply sticking a Union Jack on a leaflet and sticking it through the letter box isn‘t good enough for people any more. It‘s clear that all unionists have to offer more to the electorate. Whatever button that needs to be pressed to get people to come out and vote just isn’t being pressed.”