Empey likely to take over UUP leadership

The senior Ulster Unionist Reg Empey has emerged as the favourite in the race to claim the leadership of the party.

At the news conference yesterday where he formally confirmed his candidacy, Mr Empey revealed that he has the backing of more than half of the party’s assembly members, as well as its MEP Jim Nicholson.

Mr Empey, a former Northern Ireland enterprise minister, represents East Belfast in the Assembly, although he has repeatedly failed to win the constituency from the DUP in the Westminster elections, and is regarded as a safe, if predictable, pair of hands.

After launching his campaign he said that the UUP fightback against the DUP was “only just beginning”.

He pledged to listen to the party grassroots and end what he called "previous high-handedness", an obvious attempt to distance himself from former leader David Trimble.

His detractors, however, will say that he was too close to Trimble to succeed where he failed.