McDonnell Elected As New SDLP Leader

Dr Alasdair McDonnell has been voted in as the fifth leader of the SDLP, once the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, but now playing second fiddle to Sinn Fein.

A Co. Antrim born GP, McDonnell is an Assembly member and an MP for the party in South Belfast.

He beat off competition from Alex Attwood, Conall McDevitt and Patsy McGlone.

He replaces Margaret Ritchie, who had been criticized by many in the party for her poor media performances.

But the new leader's first speech to a live TV audience was a faltering one - in which he repeatedly stopped from delivering his script to complain about the bright lights on the stage where he was speaking.

"Could somebody turn off those lights please?" he said, "I'm blinded."

While his party colleagues initially laughed, they were more concerned when the lights became a constant distraction to him and his message was lost.

The central theme of his speech was that the heart had been torn out of the Good Friday Agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP.

He said his own party had been "hypnotized" by the deal, and that the SDLP had put far too much of its energy into creating a comfortable place for others around the Agreement.

The party that once dominated the Northern Irish political scene under the leadership of Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, is now a pale shadow of its former self.

In May's Stormont elections it won just 14 seats in the 108 seat Assembly.

But McDonnell said he wanted to "smash the myth that the SDLP's fate is already sealed and that the party was somehow doomed to fail and die".

"All that is wrong with us is that we don't get enough votes - that is all," he said.