A councillor has quit the Ulster Unionist Party over "completely chaotic" plans for May's local government elections.
Carl McClean accused the UUP of "disgraceful behaviour" in its candidate selection process in North Down, describing it as "absolute madness".
He claimed the party was risking the loss of councillors by running several candidates in areas where it would be "completely impossible" to elect more than one Ulster Unionist.
Read more: UUP defends candidate's attendance at performance of song with UVF lyrics
The Ards and North Down councillor, who quit the party on Monday night, said he now plans to stand in the election as an independent candidate.
Mr McClean told Belfast Live that he and others raised "serious concerns" with the party leadership but they were "basically batted away".
He said: "It's just really bad, low-level parish pump nonsense and I just thought, you know what, I'm done with it."
Mr McClean said other councillors are "considering their positions as we speak".
The 43-year-old said he sees no future for the Ulster Unionist Party, adding: "We have a leader struggling to work out what the point of our party is."
He continued: "Recent behaviour within the local North Down party and the behaviour around the selection of candidates has been disgraceful. It would not be tolerated by any other party in the UK.
"Concerns that had been put forward have been dismissed and I see no future with the party.
"It's not a party that seems to be capable of listening at this point. It seems to be in full panic mode."
Mr McClean was first elected in 2014 in the Bangor Central area, and was re-elected in 2019 in Holywood and Clandeboye.
The UUP ran two candidates in his ward in 2019 but only Mr McClean was elected.
Each received under half the quota of first-preference votes needed to be deemed elected, but Mr McClean secured a seat based on vote transfers.
Mr McClean raised concerns about running two candidates again in 2023 after the party selected Linzi McLaren as his running mate.
The councillor said that "constituencies tend to select their candidates and that's ratified by the party".
But he said "very strange changes were made" in North Down such as "running additional candidates in places where we don't have a mission of getting two in".
He added: "This was raised with the party leadership and the party leadership didn't do anything about it. Several councillors have been really concerned about this."
A UUP spokesman said: "The Ulster Unionist Party has its own internal process for selecting candidates and the numbers to run in each council area, and it was this process which successfully delivered Carl's election to Ards and North Down council in 2019.
"It is with sadness that we learnt that Carl was now set on resigning from the party.
"As sad as the loss of Carl is, the reality remains there are still many young, dedicated Ulster Unionists ready to run in his place to provide a bright future for unionism.
"We will not be distracted from our approach of bringing in new enthusiastic candidates, in particular more new female candidates."
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