The Alliance Party offers a vision of a “progressive, liberal, fair and open” society, Naomi Long has said after she was formally confirmed as the new party leader.
More than 130 members of the party’s ruling council gathered in her East Belfast constituency in the Park Avenue Hotel to unanimously and enthusiastically endorse her as successor to David Ford. She was the only candidate.
Ms Long said that South Antrim Assembly member Mr Ford, who led Alliance for 15 years, had left the party “in good health and in good spirits”.
She said the centrist Alliance Party, which has eight Assembly members, believed in a Northern Ireland society that “can thrive because of our differences, not in spite of them”.
“When it comes to difference we have a choice: we can use it to divide people and make it a weakness or we can embrace and celebrate that diversity, and make it our strength. We in Alliance chose to celebrate it,” she said.
She said the party’s founders had concentrated on tackling sectarian division but now the focus must be wider.
“It is about recognising that regardless of our background, our religious beliefs, our gender, our sexual orientation, our disabilities, our race, colour or nationality we all have a contribution to make to society and to this party,” Ms Long said.
“We are joined by a fundamental belief that people, however diverse, have more in common than divides them.”
Political shock
Ms Long, who is 44, sprung one of the big political shocks of recent years in Northern Ireland when in 2010 she ousted then DUP leader and first minister Peter Robinson as MP for East Belfast.
She lost that seat last year when faced with the opposition of the DUP’s Gavin Robinson (no relation to the former DUP leader) who had the support of the Ulster Unionist Party and the Traditional Unionist Voice party which did not stand candidates. Nonetheless, she won 16,978 votes, which at 43 per cent was the biggest percentage share of the vote ever won by Alliance in a parliamentary election.
Ms Long is a native of east Belfast and a member of the Presbyterian Church. She recently expressed her support for former leader David Ford who was removed as an elder of Second Donegore Presbyterian Church in Co Antrim due to his support for same-sex marriage.
With her red hair, she has been dubbed a “Ginger Ninja”, a description she has exploited to her advantage.
Death threats
Ms Long is an engineering graduate of Queen’s University Belfast. She worked in a structural engineering consultancy and also held a research and training post at Queen’s.
She has put in the hard yards as a politician, starting off as an Alliance member of Belfast City Council in 2001. She was first elected to the Northern Assembly in East Belfast in 2003, succeeding former leader Dr John Alderdice.
In 2009 she was the second woman to be elected Belfast lord mayor. She was deputy Alliance leader for past 10 years. She is the eighth person and the first woman to lead Alliance since its foundation in 1970.
Following the eruption in 2012 of loyalist demonstrations against Belfast City Council’s decision to limit the number of days the union flag should fly over City Hall, Ms Long received a number of death threats while Alliance offices in her constituency were attacked a number of times.
She is married to Martin Long, a Belfast city councillor.
