Another one bites the dust. Mhairi Black today becomes the sixth SNP MP to announce she is standing down at the next election. It’s a rather big deal given Black is the Westminster group’s deputy leader. She famously pushed Labour’s Douglas Alexander out of his seat at only 20 years of age, with her entry to parliament symbolising the party’s landslide victory in 2015.
Black follows in the footsteps of former Westminster group leader Ian Blackford, onetime party treasurer Douglas Chapman, Peter Grant, Angela Crawley and Stewart Hosie in quitting the Commons. Currently Mr S calculates that 13 per cent of the SNP group will not be standing as MPs in 2024. The party appears to be afflicted by an ever-growing exodus; we can only wonder why…
Black’s statement today paints a picture of a woman keen to avoid the ‘toxic’ Westminster culture and instead settle down into ‘married life’. But the youngest MP for over 350 years managed to cause quite a stir during her time in the Commons, so let us not forget some of her high points in office:
1. Breaking her own government’s drinking rules
As lockdown drew to a close, the Scottish government’s draconian rules did not. Much to the frustration of train passengers, the Covid-era ban on booze consumption was extended even after restrictions eased off. One young politician clearly didn’t think much of this either. Mhairi Black was caught on camera swilling Tennent’s lager in full view of her train carriage in April 2022. Talk about shameless. Rules for thee, but not for me…
2. …And breaking parliamentary records
In 2018, Black broke a parliamentary record – she was the first MP to use the ‘c-word’ in a speech. Before launching into examples of the shocking misogynistic abuse she received online, Black warned her fellow parliamentarians that ‘some folk will be uncomfortable with the graphic language I’m about to use’. You can say that again. Or, er, maybe running through that string of insults once is enough.
3. Black is certainly not afraid to jibe her fellow right honourables
Tory MPs Caroline Nokes and Oliver Dowden have both felt the wrath of disagreeing with Black before. In 2017, she blasted Nokes for the government’s cuts to housing benefits, and sniffed at the Tory politician’s suggestion that the Scottish government had the powers available to it to ‘alleviate the changes being proposed’. Thoroughly unimpressed at Nokes’s response, Black can be seen shaking her head, replying: ‘You talk sh**e, hen.’
And not even the now Deputy PM could escape Black’s mocking. Oliver Dowden slipped up when he told her that the SNP had been in government for 13 years, prompting fits of laughter from nationalist benches. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that Dowden can’t count,’ Black sneered after the PMQs session, ‘nor that he has no idea about Scotland and its government.’
4. She is not immune to a telling off by the Speaker
Earlier this year, Black was reprimanded by Deputy Speaker Rosie Winterton after suggesting that the ‘dangerous’ Tory government was guilty of making ‘bad decisions’ over lockdown, adding: ‘Mind you, we shouldn’t be surprised – given the fact they seem to have been p*shed half the time at parties in No. 10!’
Black didn’t manage to quite bring herself to apologise, even after her dressing down. Instead she spouted an impressive list of synonyms that may have been rather smarter to employ the first time around: ‘They were inebriated, intoxicated, paralytic at parties in No. 10. Is that alright?!’
5. And Black has been more than willing to wade into the culture wars…
In 2020, the SNP politician defended a controversial decision to invite the unimaginatively named drag queen ‘FlowJob’ to a primary school in Scotland. While ‘FlowJob’ was there to discuss the Section 28 act, which banned the promotion of homosexuality by teachers until 2003, it wasn’t the content of the talk that parents found disturbing. No, it was the host of sexually explicit social media posts associated with the drag queen. A rather reasonable concern, surely? Not to Black, who instead chose to slam critics and accuse them of homophobia.
Black’s outbursts will certainly be missed. First Minister Humza Yousaf described her as a ‘trailblazer’, while his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon has said that she is ‘gutted’ at the politician’s decision, tweeting mysteriously: ‘I only hope it’s temporary’. Will we see Black and her fellow leavers make a move back up north? Only time will tell…
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