now on bbc news, it s time for political thinking with nick robinson. welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than interrogation of someone his political thinking helps to shape ours. once again, london and brussels are at loggerheads. once again, the row between the uk and the eu is about the status of northern ireland. once again, politics in belfast is deadlocked, with unionists refusing to share power with sinn fein. my guess is someone whose life and career is based on a refusal to take sides in the political battle. it is a decision that has paid dividends for naomi long, who leads the alliance party, which won a record number of seats in the recent elections. brought up in one of the most fiercely loyalist parts of east belfast, she insisted that politics should not be defined by whether you want northern ireland to stay in the uk or instead to be united with the rest of ireland. but does she and her party really represent anything more than simply no
political thinking helps to shape ours. once again, london and brussels are at loggerheads. once again come row between the uk and the eu is about the status of northern ireland. once again, politics in belfast is deadlocked, with unionists refusing to share power with sinn fein. my guess is someone whose life and career is based on your refusal to take sides in the political battle to stop it is a decision that has paid dividends for naomi long, who leads the alliance party, which won a record number of seats in the recent elections. brought up in one of the most fiercely loyal as parts of east belfast, she insisted that politics should not be defined by whether you want northern ireland to stay in the uk ought instead to be united with the rest of ireland. but does she and her party really represent anything more than simply none of the above? naomi long, from belfast, welcome to political thinking. hi there. do you everfind welcome to political thinking. hi there. do you e
belfast. i have never personalised it, it was never about bringing down peter robinson, it was about winning for alliance. but they wanted to bring you down, because the unionist parties all clubbed together five years later to get to it, but they successfully did. do they tell you, and you have talked about being late night on twitter when you shouldn t be, i suspect they think there are a traitor, don t they? they think you protrude you roots, that you are actually helping sinn fein to success, because you are not helping them. in northern ireland, this desire that we all have to take a side is pretty strong, and the local terminology is a londy, which harks back to the siege of derry. i get that sewing at me occasionally. what i do i do for my community, because i believe that the opportunities northern ireland can have as a peaceful place, and work together instead of pulling apart, are so much greater than the opportunities we have with division. and it isn t to dismiss the past,
terminology is a londy, which harks back to the siege of derry. i get that sewing at me occasionally. what i do i do for my community, because i do i do for my community, because i believe that the opportunities northern ireland can have as a peaceful place, as a place where we have more integrated lives, public and work together instead of putting apart, are so much greater than the opportunities we have with the vision. and it isn t to dismiss the past, it matters and we have to deal with that and in a way that has integrity, and i don t excuse what the ira did come and i certainly don t accept that it was valid. but i do believe very strongly that we have an opportunity as a result of the good friday agreement to move beyond that conflict and start to look at how do we re gear our society in a way that we can respectfully disagree on the constitutional position but still work together on the health service, the state of our communities come on housing, on the cost of living