Election 2023: Ex-DUP and UUP leaders point towards a two party solution to end three-way split of unionist vote

Edwin Poots and Mike Nesbitt made the comments after the council election results handed Sinn Fein victory as the biggest party. Mr Nesbitt emphasised that he would not support a merger but could envisage two new unionist parties.

SF had already come out as the biggest party in the Assembly after last May’s election.

Speaking to the media at the weekend, both men said something must be done.

Mr Poots, who led the DUP for a month in 2021, told the BBC the council result had been “decent” but it wasn’t enough. "Sinn Fein have obviously surged and that's largely been at the expense of other nationalist parties,” he said. "That's something where I think for unionism it's a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment. So as people look at these results and they look at nationalism coalescing around Sinn Fein and unionism being divided across three parties I think that's not a sustainable model for the way forward. It's for unionists to look at it and realise and it's not the best way forward for unionism.

"I would much prefer to see unionism in general having a stronger output and unionism in general holding their seats… I look at the United Kingdom being the fifth largest economy in the world, I look at the health service and the care that is provided there during the time of need.

"I look at so many other benefits that exist at being a part of the United Kingdom and therefore, when you get a vibrant republican party that wants to take us out of that Union doing well, that's not a good day for Northern Ireland.”

Mike Nesbitt, who led the UUP from 2012 to 2017, told the BBC: "It is my view that if you look at the trend within unionism that the broad church that we used to celebrate as part of our culture within Ulster unionism is no longer effective.

"It's day has gone and I believe as a personal view, and I'm not talking on behalf of the party here, that a fundamental re-alignment of unionism is now required so that we can have a coherence that is currently absent...

"But I believe what we should be looking at is not unionist unity because that just isn't going to happen.”

Instead he told BBC Radio UIster that “a realignment to my mind looks like two parties”.

"One which would be probably closer aligned to the current TUV, and then you would have a second much larger party which would be made up of the more progressive unionists who would be coherent and they would be selling a coherent message about the future in a way that we are not doing at the moment.”

However, Mr Nesbitt emphasised to the News Letter that he was not talking about a merger, but rather two new parties.