What next for Ulster Unionist Party after turbulent week?

Another rambunctious week in the turbulent life of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) ended with, of all things, an away day.

A nice Friday opportunity to chew over where the party stands now and where it wishes to go. Over coffee and croissants.

Robbie Butler was there for as long as his now-busy diary would allow. And perhaps more surprisingly, Mike Nesbitt, given what had just happened.

From the outside looking in there was much to discuss, some of it not good from the party's point of view.

It entered this week ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the most recent opinion poll for the first time in two decades, with Burrows the most popular unionist leader.

The rank and file appear to love him. Some of his MLAs less so, including Butler his new health minister.

But, needs must, and that vacancy could not remain unfilled for long.

Perhaps, naively you might think, that leaving your only executive minister, Nesbitt, believing he had no option but to resign by publicly undermining him at a town hall meeting is bad for electoral business.

Especially coming weeks after falling out so badly with another former leader, Doug Beattie, that he quit the party.

As one party grandee said to me this week "we never fail to disappoint".

On 6 June, I wrote: "If metaphorically shooting yourself in the foot had real-world consequences the Ulster Unionist Party would walk with a permanent limp."

Jon Burrows - a disrupter - an unusual political leader by any standards, does not see it like this.

He believes the events of this week are the inevitable outworking of a revolution spearheaded by him.

Someone close to his thinking told me: "Jon recognised the UUP was flatlining and needed a high-impact injection of energy to make it relevant again".

Mike Nesbitt stepped down from the role of health minister amid a row with the party leader Jon Burrows [PA Media]

There's plenty of energy. The relevance bit will take longer to assess.

But Burrows displays no doubts.

"Changing a stale party containing several former leaders was always going to cause friction," says his confidante, "but his calculation is that some turbulence is unavoidable if the UUP is to reconnect with ordinary people and achieve lasting renewal."

The former leaders are falling like flies.

Beattie is gone. Nesbitt is still around, no longer in a position of power, and he stands down at next May's Assembly election.

The task now is building a new fresh team and there's little time to do it.

Also won't the party's rivals seek to capitalise on the UUP's latest travails?

The DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, said this week his party would not seek to "make hay" calling that "petty nonsense".

But the DUP are still reeling from the Jeffrey Donaldson affair and now the news that the Strangford MP Jim Shannon is facing prosecution for common assault against a woman which he strongly denies.

In such circumstances the party could be forgiven for welcoming the spotlight turning on someone else.

No such magnanimity from the other main unionist party, the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV).

The party leader, Jim Allister, released a statement this week entitled "DUP in Donaldson turmoil. UUP in Nesbitt/Burrows turmoil. TUV steady and surer in its vision and stability".

A cynic would say that is because Allister only has himself to fall out with - but you get the point.

Next May looms and Burrows will be judged on his results then and nothing else.

The last time the Ulster Unionists won more seats than the DUP in a major election was the General Election of June 2001 when it took six seats to the DUP's five.

The last, and only time, they beat their unionist rivals in an assembly election was the inaugural poll of 1998.

The DUP nudged ahead in 2003 and the gap has been widening ever since.

That's a quarter of a century of pain for the UUP.

Jon Burrows believes he has the cure.

Butler under 'no illusions' about scale of new job as health minister

Mike Nesbitt resigns as health minister amid row with UUP leader

Doug Beattie quits UUP as clear his membership no longer 'tenable'