Naomi Long

Long also became the first Liberal-affiliated MP elected to Westminster in Northern Ireland since James Brown Dougherty in Londonderry City in 1914.

Despite the close relationship between the Alliance Party and the Liberal Democrats, Long did not sit with the coalition government nor take the coalition whip and was not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

Naomi Rachel Long MLA (née Johnston; born 13 December 1971) is a Northern Irish politician who has served as Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive since February 2024, having previously served from January 2020 to October 2022.

She became the second woman to hold the post, after Grace Bannister (1981–82).

She graduated from Queen's University of Belfast with a degree in civil engineering in 1994, worked in a structural engineering consultancy for two years, held a research and training post at Queen's University for three years, and then went back into environmental and hydraulic engineering consultancy for four years.

At 18.8%, her vote share was higher than that for Alderdice in 1998.

She first took political office in 2001 when she was elected to Belfast City Council for the Victoria ward.

In 2003 Long was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East, succeeding her fellow party member John Alderdice.

In 2006 she was named deputy leader of her party.

In 2007 she more than doubled the party's vote in the constituency, being placed second ahead of the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

The overall UUP vote, however, was 22%.

Long served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2009 to 2010 and represented Belfast East in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2003 to 2010.

On 1 June 2009 she was elected as Lord Mayor of Belfast, defeating William Humphrey (Democratic Unionist Party) by 26 votes to 24 in a vote at a council meeting.

She resigned as an MLA after being elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast East at the 2010 general election.

On 6 May 2010 she defeated Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP, to become Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast East in the House of Commons.

She became the first MP elected to Westminster for the Alliance Party (previously, Stratton Mills, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, had changed parties to Alliance).

On 10 December 2012, Long received a number of death threats and a petrol bomb was thrown inside an unmarked police car guarding her constituency office.

This violence erupted as a reaction by Ulster loyalists to the decision by Alliance Party members of Belfast City Council to vote in favour of restricting the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall to designated days throughout the year, which at the time constituted 18 specific days.

She served for one parliamentary term and lost her seat to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) at the 2015 general election.

In 2015, Long lost her seat in the Commons to Gavin Robinson of the DUP, as a result of a five-party unionist pact in the constituency which saw the UUP, UKIP, TUV and PUP all stand aside in favour of Robinson.

She has served as leader of the Alliance Party since 2016 and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East since 2020.

She returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016, before resigning for a second time after being elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Northern Ireland in 2019.

In January 2016, Long announced that she would return as an Assembly candidate in the 2016 elections having been nominated in place of incumbent Judith Cochrane.

She was subsequently elected on the first count with 14.7% of first-preference votes.

Following her return to the Assembly, Long assumed positions on the Committee for Communities, the All Party Group on Fairtrade, the All Party Group for Housing, and chaired the All Party Group on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

In August 2016, Long called for Sinn Féin's Máirtín Ó Muilleoir to stand aside as Minister of Finance during an investigation of the Stormont Finance Committee's handling of its Nama inquiry, while Ó Muilleoir was a committee member.

This followed allegations that his party had "coached" loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson prior to his appearance before the committee.

In November 2016, Long criticised Sinn Féin and the DUP for delaying the publication of a working group report on abortion, which recommended legislative changes in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, calling on the Executive "to act without further delay to help women who decide to seek a termination in these very difficult circumstances".

On 26 October 2016, Long was elected Alliance leader unopposed following the resignation of David Ford.

In the first manifesto released under her leadership, Long affirmed her commitment to building a "united, open, liberal and progressive" society.

Her party's legislative priorities were revealed to include the harmonisation and strengthening of equality and anti-discrimination measures, the introduction of civil marriage equality, development of integrated education and a Northern Ireland framework to tackle climate change.

In the 2017 Assembly election, Long topped the poll in Belfast East and was returned to the Assembly with 18.9% of first-preference votes.

The election was widely viewed as a success for Alliance, with the party increasing its vote share by 2 percentage points and retaining all of its seats in a smaller Assembly.

The party subsequently held the balance of power at Stormont.

Alliance targeted two seats in South and Belfast East in the 2017 general election.

During the campaign, Long reaffirmed her support for a People's Vote, marriage equality, Votes at 16 and greater transparency surrounding political donations.

She also pledged to oppose any rollback of the Human Rights Act.

Following the collapse of talks to restore devolution in February 2018, Long reiterated her view that the pay of MLAs should be cut in the absence of a functioning Executive.

After the United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020, Long returned as an MLA and was appointed Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive.

Born in east Belfast, she attended Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate School.