The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), or simply Alliance, is a liberal[3] and centrist[7] political party in Northern Ireland. As of the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it is the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and has made recent breakthroughs to place third in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and third highest-polling regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons,[11] the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.[12]
Founded in 1970 from the New Ulster Movement, the Alliance Party originally represented moderate and non-sectarian unionism. However, over time, particularly in the 1990s, it moved towards neutrality on the Union, and has come to represent wider liberal and non-sectarian concerns. It supports the Good Friday Agreement but maintains a desire for the reform of the political system towards a non-sectarian future, and in the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is designated as neither unionist nor Irish nationalist, but 'Other'.
The Alliance Party won their first seat in the UK House of Commons in the 2010 general election, unseating the former East Belfast MP Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Naomi Long was the first MP from the Alliance Party since Stratton Mills, who joined the party from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 1973. However, the DUP regained the seat at the 2015 general election following an electoral pact with the UUP. In the 2019 general election, Alliance regained its presence in the House of Commons when Stephen Farry won the North Down seat vacated by the independent unionist, Sylvia Hermon. Earlier that year, the party's leader, Naomi Long, won the party's first seat in the European Parliament in the last European election before Brexit. Under Long's leadership, the Alliance Party would exceed expectations in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election and gain numerous seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.[13]
The Alliance Party is a member of the Liberal International[14] and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe,[15] and is aligned with the Liberal Democrats in Great Britain.[16]
It was formed in April 1970 as an alternative to the established parties. In the context of a rapidly worsening political crisis, the party aimed not only to present an alternative to what they perceived as sectarian parties and expressly aimed to act as a bridge between the Protestant and Catholic sections of the community and heal the divisions in Northern Ireland society. The Party's founding principles were expressly in favour of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, although in contrast to other unionist parties, this was expressed in socio-economic rather than ethnic terms.[17]On 5 February 1973, prior to the 1973 Northern Ireland border poll, the party's Chairman, Jim Hendron, stated that "Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Fein all-Ireland republic or a Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people."[18]