SO Mike Nesbitt is going to retire as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). At one point I was on nodding terms with Mike when he worked in the BBC, and he struck me at the time as a modest, highly intelligent guy. Whether he’s remained that way I don’t know – sometimes life makes a person a narrower, more intense version of themselves, sometimes it expands them, opens them to new things, not necessarily good things. For instance, some of you may remember Conor Cruise O’Brien, who started as a Labour Party candidate in Dublin and ended up a sad unionist in the North.
