WHOEVER IS declared the new leader of the SDLP to succeed Margaret Ritchie, who stood down in September, must be “vote transfer friendly”, all four candidates agreed last night.
The contenders made their final appeals to delegates at a hustings session at the annual SDLP conference in the Ramada Hotel in south Belfast last night, all promising reform and renewal.
The narrow front-runner was the outgoing party deputy leader and Mid-Ulster Assembly member Patsy McGlone although there was general consensus that with four candidates and the vote by proportional representation, winning transfer votes would be crucial to the outcome.
At the start of the week Paddy Power bookmakers had the West Belfast MLA and Minister of the Environment Alex Attwood as favourite at 11/8. By yesterday he was third on the board at 11/4. Mr McGlone was favourite at 6/5, having been 7/4.
The South Belfast MLA Conall McDevitt’s earlier odds were 3/1 and last night they loosened slightly to 7/2, making him the outsider.
The bookmaker viewed the South Belfast MP and MLA Dr Alasdair McDonnell as now the main rival to Mr McGlone. Earlier in the week he was 6/1. Last night he was 2/1.
Some 355 SDLP delegates will decide the leadership with the result expected about teatime today, and the new leader making his first keynote conference speech tomorrow afternoon. Voting started at 7pm last night.
All four candidates during various hustings were at one in stating that the party badly needs to be restructured and reinvigorated in order to put up a better challenge to the SDLP’s main nationalist rivals, Sinn Féin.
In the first Assembly election the SDLP won 24 seats. In this year’s election the SDLP had dropped to 14 seats, giving the party just one ministry.
Mr McGlone said the SDLP needed reorganisation from “top to bottom, a reconnection with the grassroots, a makeover and more professionalism in how we do things”. He added: “My main aim is to work for unity of the people of Ireland and also to practise practical social democracy.”
Dr McDonnell promised “collective leadership” and an “action plan” to help improve party fortunes. He told delegates the “SDLP can survive or die”. The future was about “an SDLP that can deliver again or an SDLP that merely exists on the margins”.
Mr Attwood said many people wanted more “than politics in the image of the DUP and Sinn Féin”. A new phase of politics was emerging on the island of Ireland, he added, and it was vital the SDLP help shape a “new North and a new Ireland”.
Mr McDevitt also promised reform, stating that “reorganising, renewing and rebuilding this great party will require that every one of us go forward united and committed to facing the challenge ahead together”.
