Who is Alliance leader Naomi Long?
- Published
Naomi Long: The basics
Date of birth: 13 December 1971
Family: Married Michael, who is an Alliance Party councillor in Belfast, in 1995
Education: Bloomfield Collegiate, Queen's University Belfast
Career: Worked as an engineering consultant and in research at Queen's University, lord mayor of Belfast 2009-10, Northern Ireland justice minister 2020-2022 and from February 2024
Parliamentary constituency: None, represents Belfast East in the Northern Ireland Assembly
Who is she?
Born in 1971 in east Belfast, the constituency she now represents, Mrs Long did not aspire to a career in politics and studied engineering at university.
She says it was what she describes as the failure of politics in the 1970s and 1980s that inspired her to get involed.
She joined the centrist Alliance Party and was elected to Belfast City Council in June 2001.
In 2009, she became Belfast's second female lord mayor and in 2010 her win at the general election in Belfast East was the biggest upset of the night as she unseated Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Peter Robinson, who had held the seat since 1979
In 2012 the party was targeted by loyalists after it supported a move to only display the union flag at Belfast City Hall on designated days.
Mrs Long received death threats and later revealed she was being treated for skin cancer at the same time.
From 2020 to 2022 she served as Northern Ireland's justice minister and she took on the role again in February 2024 when the Stormont Executive returned after a two-year hiatus.
When did she become Alliance leader?
Mrs Long took over as deputy leader of Alliance in 2006 and her time as lord mayor and Belfast East MP raised her profile significantly.
After losing her Westminster seat in 2015 she returned the next year to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Later that year David Ford, who had led the party for 15 years, stood down from the role and Mrs Long was elected unopposed as his replacement.
Where is Alliance at the moment?
The party won one Westminster seat at the last general election - its deputy leader Stephen Farry in North Down.
The party will be hoping Mrs Long can win back her Belfast East seat - in 2019 she was within 2,000 votes of DUP incumbent Gavin Robinson's majority.
However, if she did win, the party's leader and deputy leader could both be at Westminster.
With the the DUP and Traditional Unionist Voice backing an independent unionist candidate in North Down, Mr Farry will have to work hard to hold on to his 3,000 majority.
In 2022's Stormont Assembly elections the party more than doubled its seats, winning 17.
