He was elected although not without some controversy. It emerged shortly before the leadership election that a quarter of the UUP membership came from Fermanagh and South Tyrone, a disproportionately high figure. "The Phoenix", an Irish political magazine, described Elliott as a "blast from the past" and that his election signified "a significant shift to the right" by the UUP. In March 2012, he announced that he would step down as leader of the Ulster Unionists. When asked about his reasoning, he said that "some people have not given [him] a fair opportunity at developing and progressing many initiatives", going on to say that some of the hostility began immediately after he was selected as leader. He also accused some party members of making his job more difficult by briefing journalists. His resignation triggered the 2012 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election. When Elliott took over the leadership of the UUP in 2010 the party had recently received 102,361 votes which amounted to 15.2% of the vote. In Elliott's first election in charge in the 2011 Assembly elections the UUP only received 87,531 votes which amounted to 13.2% of the vote and resulted in the party losing two of its MLAs. On the same day in 2011 the UUP also lost 16 of its Council seats. Elliott is a member of the Orange Order within Fermanagh, the Royal Black Preceptory and the Kesh branch of the Apprentice Boys of Derry (ABOD). Elliott stated publicly that he wouldn't attend gay pride parades or Gaelic Athletic Association matches, but did later meet with some gay rights groups and GAA figures in Northern Ireland. After he was elected in the 2011 Assembly election, in his victory speech in Omagh Elliott referred to the Irish tricolour as a "flag of a foreign nation". When the audience started heckling him, he went on to describe nationalist supporters holding Irish flags as "the scum of Sinn Féin". Although initially refusing to retract his comment he later issued an apology of sorts "to all those good nationalists, republicans, even Sinn Fein voters who felt offended by it." In August 2012, Elliott opposed money being spent on public inquests into people killed by the British Army and loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles. He urged relatives of those killed by the IRA—whom he called "the real victims"—to band together to "choke the system up" and stop such inquests happening. He later clarified his remarks saying "At no stage did I suggest or infer that anyone killed in the Troubles, who was not murdered by the IRA, were ‘not real victims’".