Born in East Belfast, she attended Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate School. 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 consultancy (environmental and hydraulic engineering) for four years.
She represented Belfast East in the United Kingdom House of Commons from 2010 to 2015, and previously represented the same constituency in the Northern Ireland Assembly. She served as the second elected female Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2009 to 2010. In 2003 Long was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East, succeeding her fellow party member John Alderdice.
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%. At 18.8%, her vote share was higher than that for Alderdice in 1998.
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 became the second woman to hold the post, after Grace Bannister (1981-1982).
She became the first Member of Parliament elected to Westminster for the Alliance Party (previously, Stratton Mills, a former Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament, had changed parties to Alliance).
Long also became the first Liberal-affiliated Member of Parliament elected to Westminster in Northern Ireland since James Brown Dougherty in Londonderry City in 1914. 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. In 2015 Long lost her seat in the Commons to Gavin Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party, as a result of a five-party unionist pact in the constituency which saw the UUP, UKIP, Technischer Überwachungsverein and PUP all stand aside in favour of Robinson.
She first took political office in 2001 when she was elected to Belfast City Council for the Victoria ward. In 2006 she was named deputy leader of her party. 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.
55th United Kingdom Parliament. 2nd Northern Ireland Assembly. 3rd Northern Ireland Assembly]
She is a member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and currently its deputy leader.
On 6 May 2010 she defeated Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, to become Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for Belfast East in the House of Commons.
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 17 specific days throughout the year.
