ALLIANCE LEADER Naomi Long has said her party could be competitive in up to five seats in the upcoming UK General Election on 4 July.
Speaking at her party’s General Election manifesto launch today in Carryduff, on the outskirts of Belfast, Long also called for institutional reform to end the “cycle of crisis and collapse” at Stormont.
Alliance is currently the third largest party in the North and is enjoying support from voters seeking to shun traditional orange and green lines.
Long today told the Belfast Telegraph that Alliance is “clearly in contention in four or five constituencies”.
Alliance and the SDLP are the only two parties that will run candidates in all constituencies for the upcoming Westminster elections.
Long, an MLA and current Minister for Justice in Northern Ireland, will be among those standing for election on 4 July.
She will take on DUP leader Gavin Robinson is East Belfast in what will be a repeat of their tight encounter in 2019.
The Alliance leader lost out by just over 1,800 votes in 2019 and will be hoping to make good on gains she made in that election, when her vote jumped by 9% while Robinson’s fell by close to 7%.
She previously told BBC Radio Ulster that her Westminster campaign won’t “distract” from her Justice portfolio and added that it “wasn’t a straightforward decision” to run for a position as MP.
Across the North’s 18 constituencies, Alliance currently holds one Westminster seat – that seat in North Down is held by Stephen Farry.
In addition to holding North Down and potentially taking Robinson’s seat in East Belfast, Alliance is also aiming to take the Lagan Valley seat currently held by former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson.
In its 40-year history, only two people have been MP for Lagan Valley – Donaldson and former Ulster Unionist Party leader James Molyneux.
Donaldson will not contest the election after being charged with rape and other historical sexual offences.
In 2019, Alliance MLA Sorcha Eastwood came second to Donaldson in Lagan Valley.
And while Donaldson had a 43% share of the vote in 2019 and a majority of around 14%, his vote share was down more than 16% on the previous election in 2017, while the Alliance vote surged by close to 18%.
The DUP will run MLA Jonathan Buckley in Lagan Valley but the party cannot take the seat for granted as it might have done in previous elections.
Meanwhile, Long told reporters at her party’s manifesto launch that she wanted institutional reform to prevent the collapse of Stormont.
The cross-community Alliance party has long campaigned for reform to remove the veto power to collapse the institutions held by the biggest unionist and nationalist parties.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement saw the creation of a system that required the biggest political bloc of unionists to share power with the biggest block of nationalists in a mandatory coalition.
Currently, an administration cannot be formed unless the biggest unionist party and the biggest nationalist party agree to participate in it.
Since 2017, both Sinn Féin and the DUP have pulled the plug on powersharing, meaning Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for five of the last seven years.
“The old saying is ‘turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’ … if you can influence that kind of power and control, it’s unlikely you’re going to put your hand up and say ‘yes, let’s give that away, let’s give that leverage away,” Long told party supporters today.
She described the veto power as “incredibly toxic” and added that there is an “imbalance in terms of how we operate together”.
“It doesn’t enhance our ability to co-operate and collaborate and doesn’t encourage people to come together to try and find shared solutions,” said Long.
“It simply allows people to throw up roadblocks and I think it needs to change.”
The veto mechanism was introduced during the peace process as a way of protecting minorities in the North, but Long said the system no longer reflects modern-day Northern Ireland.
“It’s not sustainable, it’s not acceptable, it’s not democratic, and we are not going to tolerate it any longer,” said Long of the ability of a single party to collapse the Stormont assembly.
She added that if change isn’t made while “things are stable and while there’s a window of opportunity, they are storing up crises down the line”.
“We know that has been the pattern of the Assembly, not just in the last few years, but over the last 25 years – we need to end that cycle of crisis and collapse,” said Long.
“I don’t want to see the UK government and the Irish government flying into Stormont to try and cajole us all to go back and do the jobs that we said we wanted to do (after another collapse).”
-With additional reporting from Press Association
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