Youngest MP in generations explains her party’s election success, saying it knows what voters want because it is in touch with ordinary people

On Monday, 20-year-old Mhairi Black, politics undergraduate and new MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, will visit the House of Commons for the second time.



Her first visit happened during a family trip to London as a teenager. On Monday, Black – along with a historic number of 55 other SNP MPs – will be addressing the practicalities (office space, accommodation, access passes) of life as a parliamentarian. “It’ll be a bit different this time,” she says, with glorious understatement.

In her first interview with the national press since her election, Black looks exhausted, understandably a little stunned at her new reality, but also passionate and articulate despite the grey Sunday morning weather and the lengthy to-do list.



It was one of the early shocks of Thursday night when it became clear that Black overturned shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander’s 16,614 majority with a 26.9% swing to the SNP. Did she genuinely believe that she could win the seat? “Honestly, when it started, I thought it was highly unlikely, but I thought at least we can put up a good fight and make the SNP a presence in the constituency.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Douglas Alexander and Mhairi Black shake hands during the declaration of results on general election night. Photograph: Lesley Martin/AFP/Getty Images

But as the campaign wore on, that changed: “I thought ‘this could happen’, because people are really angry at the Labour party and they wanted change.” Did that realisation scare her? “No,” she says eagerly. “It was real excitement, that we could actually change things.”

Mhairi Black: the 20-year-old who beat a Labour heavyweight Read more

The daughter of a local businessman and a teacher, Black, who has an elder brother, grew up in Paisley. She recalls marching against the Iraq war and for a Scottish parliament with her family and many political discussions at home, but she only became actively involved herself during the independence referendum campaign, joining the SNP after last September’s no vote.

“The thing that got me fired up [during the referendum campaign] was standing listening to people pouring their heart out to you, telling you how much they were genuinely struggling. You’re used to hearing statistics about poverty, but then you realise these aren’t numbers, these are people’s lives, filled with anxiety and struggle.”

When she is officially sworn in on Monday 18 May, she will become the youngest member of parliament since at least the 19th century. It’s a fact, she notes pithily, that seems to interest journalists “more than ordinary punters”.

“When we were chapping the doors, people weren’t really bringing it up. People are interested in: are you going to do the job, are you going to stand up for us? They’re not bothered by the aesthetics of the person that’s doing it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The moment Mhairi Black unseated Douglas Alexander.

Yet it is undeniable that, as a 20-year-old swept in on a wave of unprecedented support for the SNP, she will be viewing the Commons through very different eyes. “The thing that’s been missing from parliament for years is that’s it’s been filled with out-of-touch people who are more concerned about their business interests than the interests of ordinary people.

“I still consider myself an ordinary person and I’m very in touch with the area that I live in. I think that’s an asset of the SNP as a whole.”

She pauses, momentarily amazed. “Oh God, I can call them my colleagues now,” she says, almost to herself. “My colleagues are exactly the same. The reason we’re in this party is because it is pursuing the policies that we know people want, and the reason we know that is because we’re in touch with folk.”

Black, now in her final year of a politics and public policy degree at Glasgow University, says she has been lucky that this last semester has mainly required coursework. There is one final exam left, which she will sit at the end of May. I ask what subject the exam is for. There’s a pause before Black bursts out laughing: “Scottish politics!”