NAOMI LONG has been widely praised for her hard work, sound principles, unvarnished good humour and easy articulacy.
Most unusually for a politician, Long really is loved. But while there had been whispers that she could topple the DUP’s Peter Robinson in East Belfast, and the odd tentative bet placed, few believed she could really do it – especially given the large loyalist electorate. It’s not natural Alliance Party territory.
The new MP for East Belfast, who becomes the first member of her party to be elected to the Commons, first took political office in 2001, when she was elected to Belfast City Council. An East Belfast seat in the Assembly followed in 2003, and in 2006 she became Alliance’s deputy leader. She is currently Lord Mayor of Belfast. She’s only the second woman to take the role, and Long is proud of the fact that both she and Grace Bannister, the first female lord mayor of the city, are past pupils of Bloomfield Collegiate, the East Belfast all-girls school. Long is passionate about the awkward charms of her native city, whether cheerfully strumming a guitar in support of the Nashville songwriters’ festival, or officially opening the first Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered centre in Belfast. She’s also been praised for her behind-the-scenes work in supporting asylum seekers.
Born in 1971, Long grew up in the heart of East Belfast, later taking a Masters in Civil Engineering at Queen’s University. Her husband, Michael Long, is also an Alliance politician, serving on Castlereagh Borough Council. In a recent interview with a blogger, Long said she and her husband, both Presbyterians, had debated whether to stay in the North or leave: “We decided we wanted to stay here, but that we wanted to make a difference. And we ended up joining Alliance because we saw in Alliance a kind of microcosm of what society could be like and that you had people from all different backgrounds . . . locked in around the same ideals and vision, and for us that was kind of a hopeful thing.”
Long says the real satisfaction, for her, is dealing with the problems of constituents. “That’s the bit of the job I still enjoy most because it makes the most tangible difference to people who come through the door of the office. If you can get the problems solved, if you can cut down the bureaucracy, get between them and some of the statutory agencies, and deal with the issues quickly for them, it makes a huge difference.”