SDLP leader Colum Eastwood is expected to announce that he is stepping down after nine years in the job.
Mr Eastwood is likely to confirm the move during a news conference at noon in his native Derry today.
The 41-year-old took over the leadership of his party in 2015 and is an assured media performer. He has been the MP for Foyle since 2019.
On that occasion he won the seat back for his party from Sinn Féin with a whopping 17,000 majority amidst Brexit uncertainty.
He was re-elected in July’s Westminster election but saw that majority reduced to 4,000 votes. Despite his relative youth he is a party veteran, having held elected office for almost two decades.
He said he had been attracted to the party by the work of former leader John Hume and his deputy Seamus Mallon.
Colum Eastwood joined in 1998 while just a young teenager to campaign in favour the Good Friday Agreement.
The party has been under constant pressure since and has been overtaken by Sinn Féin as the dominant force in northern nationalism.
In recent years it has had to deal with some bruising electoral results.
The 2022 Stormont Assembly election saw it lose four seats to finish with eight, meaning that it had to go into opposition rather than form part of the mandatory governing coalition.
The following year, council elections saw another setback as Mr Eastwood’s party lost 20 seats, dropping to 39 overall and leaving it in fifth place of the five main parties.
The recent Westminster election brought a reprieve as he held his MP’s seat, despite a Sinn Féin push to win it back.
On taking up his seat last month he described the MP’s oath of allegiance to the British king as “an empty formula” and said he was taking it under protest. He added his true allegiance was to the people of Derry and Ireland
Speculation about his replacement as party leader is expected to focus on the SDLP’s other MP, Claire Hanna, who represents the South Belfast and Mid Down constituency.
Another name likely to be mentioned is that of the SDLP’s Stormont leader Matthew O’Toole.
Mr Eastwood’s resignation means that both the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists are looking for new leaders at the moment.
Mr Nesbitt has already served as Ulster Unionist leader from 2012 to 2017.
The Ulster Unionists and the SDLP were the principal architects of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which ended the Troubles but have found themselves supplanted by the DUP and Sinn Féin in the decades which followed.
