At 41, Colum Eastwood is still a young man, and younger still relative to many of his contemporaries at Westminster. He has achieved a great deal in a political career spanning two decades but ultimately has been frustrated by his failure to reverse the SDLP’s ailing fortunes.
Raised in the Creggan area of Derry, he joined the SDLP in 1998 aged 14 – the year the Good Friday Agreement was signed. While he sometimes styles himself a republican, he was drawn to the party synonymous with constitutional nationalism by the likes of John Hume and Seamus Mallon, those he later described as “political giants”.
John Manley’s analysis: Thank you Mr Eastwood but it’s time for a change
Having returned from university in Liverpool without completing his degree in Latin American Studies, he was elected to what was then Derry City Council in 2005, aged 22.
Five years later, he was selected as Mayor of Derry, and remains the youngest person to hold the position in his native city.
In 2011, he was one of three SDLP candidates returned to the Stormont assembly.
The following year, he drew criticism from unionists for carrying the coffin of friend and former Derry INLA member Seamus Coyle at a paramilitary-style funeral.
He responded by saying he acted in a personal capacity and would do the same thing again.
In 2015, frustrated by in-fighting and the direction the party was taking under the comparatively conservative Alasdair McDonnell, the then 32-year-old launched an audacious leadership bid.
Many dismissed him a young pretender, too inexperienced to lead a political party, especially one seemingly riven with division between traditionalists and modernisers, on top of the usual geographic rivalries, yet he received support from party grandees, among them Bríd Rodgers and the late Seamus Mallon.
He won the leadership contest convincingly, though initially his deputy was McDonnell supporter Fearghal McKinney, who failed to get elected in the assembly poll the following May.
Mr Eastwood stood as an unsuccessful European Parliament candidate in 2019, the same year he regained the Foyle Westminster seat for the SDLP with a landslide victory, ousting Sinn Féin’s Elisha McCallion.
In 2019, he also announced an ill-fated partnership with Fianna Fáil, which despite promising much never got off the ground. However, the SDLP leader would later point to the Shared Island initiative set up by then taoiseach Micháel Martin as the fruits of the relationship.
Earlier this year, Mr Eastwood refused to attend the St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House in protest at the US government’s support for Israel.
He was returned as MP for Foyle last month, his sizeable majority reduced by almost 13,000 votes.
On being sworn in at Westminster, he described the oath of allegiance to the British monarch as an “empty formula” which he took “under protest”.
