What you need to know about Northern Ireland's Alliance Party leader Naomi Long
The Alliance Party, now Northern Ireland's third-largest by vote share, has made big strides in recent years and under Naomi Long's leadership. Who is the East Belfast politician, and how did she reach this point?
Thursday 13 June 2024 10:06, UK
Northern Ireland's Alliance Party, once somewhat of an outlier, has become more and more successful in recent years, gaining ground in Stormont and Westminster to become Northern Ireland's third-largest party.
As campaigning ramps up before the general election on 4 July, we have a look at Naomi Long's path to becoming the Alliance Party leader.
Early life and career
The lifelong East Belfast resident, born in 1971, did not go straight into politics.
Educated at Bloomfield Collegiate, she then studied civil engineering at Queen's University before working as an engineer for almost 10 years.
But she was also politically active and in 2001 was elected to Belfast City Council as a councillor for the liberal, centrist Alliance Party.
She was motivated to enter politics after becoming frustrated by "men in grey suits shouting at each other on the television".
She then represented Belfast East in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2003 to 2010.
Her success in the 2010 UK general election was regarded as a real coup, ousting then first minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson from his East Belfast seat.
It made her the first Alliance MP to be elected to Westminster.
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But she lost her seat in 2015, and then in 2016 returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly as MLA (member of the legislative assembly) for East Belfast.
The following year she had surgery for her "very aggressive endometriosis".
She is married to Michael Long, an Alliance councillor on Belfast City Council. They have both served as lord mayor of Belfast.
What is her role in the Alliance Party?
She has led the party to success since becoming leader in October 2016.
It won the third-largest share of the vote in Northern Ireland in the last UK general election in 2019 - though only won one seat - and in the Northern Ireland assembly election in 2022.
Unlike Northern Ireland's two biggest parties, Alliance is cross-community: neither Irish nationalist like Sinn Fein nor pro-unionist like the DUP.
She has continued to contest the Belfast East seat in UK elections since losing it in 2015, so far unsuccessfully.
This year she is again hoping the tides will turn so she can win back the seat from the DUP.
Alliance is positioning itself as the alternative to the Conservatives and those who have allied with them.
The 2024 election is "about removing the Tories and local MPs who supported them", she has written on X.
The comment is a jibe at the DUP, which partnered with Tory prime minister Theresa May in 2017 after she lost her party's overall majority in the election that year.
The DUP was pro-union with the UK and pro-Brexit.
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Ms Long herself campaigned to remain in the EU during the UK's 2016 referendum on membership - "particularly because" of the "issue of borders and boundaries", she said in 2021.
She was a member of the European Parliament between 2019 and 2020. When the UK left the EU, she returned as an MLA and was appointed justice minister in the Northern Ireland executive.
Also standing for the Belfast East seat against Ms Long are Séamas de Faoite (Social Democratic and Labour Party), Ryan North (Independent), Gavin Robinson (DUP), John Ross (Traditional Unionist Voice), Brian Smyth (Green Party), and Ryan Warren (Ulster Unionist Party).