He spent summer holidays on his uncle's farm in Gortin, County Tyrone, and moved to Northern Ireland permanently in 1969 when he went to study Economics at Queen's University Belfast (QUB).

[2] Ford stood unsuccessfully for Antrim Borough Council in 1989, and entered politics full-time when he became general secretary of the Alliance Party.

Ford outlined his internationalist view point in his speech at the leadership selection when he said:I am keen to co-operate with other non-sectarian groups in Northern Ireland, including political parties that will stand against the tribal divide.

There is little more objectionable than the sight of the political begging bowl being dragged out by sectional politicians.Ford gave Alliance a stability which it had lacked since the departure of John Alderdice, but the Party had declined seriously in the late 1990s and all Ford could do was stabilise the situation.

Within a month of taking over the leadership, however, Ford had a chance to establish Alliance's relevancy in the post-Good Friday Agreement environment – on 6 November 2001, the Northern Ireland Executive was to be re-established.

Ford and two of his five colleagues re-designated as Unionist, for just 22 minutes, in order to secure Trimble's position, and thereby enabled the devolved institutions to operate for another year.

[5] In 2004, Ford made good his leadership election pledge to work with other parties, as Alliance joined with the Workers' Party, Northern Ireland Conservatives and elements of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition to support Independent candidate John Gilliland[6] in the European elections, achieving the best result for the centre ground for 25 years.

Separate candidates for the position were put forward by both the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP, being Danny Kennedy and Alban McGuinness respectively.

Referencing the election, Ford said, "I am fully conscious that I am not the unanimous choice of this assembly but I do say to every member of this house, that we have a duty together to provide leadership and if we didn't know that before, we sadly had a reminder of it at half past twelve this morning.