SDLP leadership: Colum Eastwood 'up for the challenge'

The new leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Colum Eastwood, has said he is "up for the challenge".

He defeated Dr Alasdair McDonnell in a vote at the party's annual conference in Armagh on Saturday by 172 votes to 133.

Foyle MLA Mr Eastwood, 32, is the SDLP's youngest member of the Northern Ireland Assembly

Mr Eastwood said he hoped to "unite the party".

"I feel great. It was a long few weeks of campaigning and people responded positively to it," he told BBC Radio Foyle.

"We have a lot of work to do. We can't turn around the fortunes of the SDLP in a few months but we can make a start.

"I have no doubt about the enormity of the task.

"People want to hear us talking about people's issues and people's concerns and that's where I intend to take the party."

He said it was the "biggest margin of victory that anybody has ever had in a leadership election for the SDLP".

"We are going to do this as a united party. I have no interest in carrying on any old battles. I wasn't involved in them and I don't intend in keeping them going," he said.

South Belfast MLA Fearghal McKinney has been voted the party's new deputy leader.

Mr McKinney received 158 votes, with Upper Bann MLA Dolores Kelly getting 138.

Read more: Colum Eastwood's 10-year rise to SDLP leader

"Fearghal was supporting Alasdair. He felt he was being loyal to the leadership. That's fair," he said.

"Some people didn't vote for me but that's fine. That's politics. That's democracy.

"We have to make Northern Ireland work. We haven't seen the benefits of the peace process or the economic benefits we were all promised in Derry.

"The DUP/Sinn Fein government hasn't worked. Their visions are not credible."