Why is Westminster losing one of its youngest ever MPs, Mhairi Black?

SNP deputy Westminster leader Mhairi Black has said she will step down at the next general election, citing the “toxic” environment at Westminster. Her departure is a surprise; she is still only 28, having been the youngest MP in over 300 years when she first entered the House of Commons in 2015 at the age of 20 years and 237 days.

Why is Mhairi Black standing down?

She’s fed up with “poisonous” Westminster, telling Emily Maitlis on the podcast The News Agents: “Honestly, because I’m tired is a big part of it. And the thing that makes me tired is Westminster. I think it is one of the most unhealthy workplaces that you could ever be in. It’s a toxic environment.”

“Just the entire design of the place and how it functions is just the opposite of everything that I find comfortable. It’s definitely a poisonous place. Whether that’s because of what folk can get away with in it or the number of personal motivations and folk having ulterior motives for things …. and it’s just not a nice place to be in.”

Her complaints chime with other disillusioned MPs – particularly women – despite the strides made in improving female representation in recent decades, and she’s been consistent in her views, having complained to colleagues on all sides about the “old boys’ club” and how MPs are “excluded from reality”.

Isn’t it just because she’s going to lose her seat to Labour?

Just for a change, such cynicism is misplaced. Her Paisley and Renfrewshire South constituency is one of the Central Belt safe seats Labour used to take for granted. Indeed, former Labour minister Douglas Alexander won 59.6 per cent of the vote there in 2010, against 18.1 per cent for the SNP. Only five years later, he was swept aside in the post-Indyref general election of 2015 in an astonishing loss to Black. Since then, she has consolidated her majority and, in 2019, was on a solid 50.2 per cent to Labour’s 25.4 per cent. Enfeebled as the SNP currently is, Black could have looked forward to another term at least.

What will she leave behind at Westminster?

A considerable reputation as a performer, despite being the youngest member to be elected since the Great Reform Act of 1832. The term ‘baby of the House’ is traditionally bestowed on such prodigies, but Black was hardly naive in her ways; her maiden speech was a tour de force and earned an extremely rare round of applause in the chamber. Outspoken, direct and above all eloquent, Black has mixed policy, anecdote and passion. Hansard of 14 July 2015 records this, for example: “The Chancellor [George Osborne] also abolished any housing benefit for anyone below the age of 21. So we are now in the ridiculous situation whereby because I am an MP, I am not only the youngest, but I am also the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing. We now have one of the most uncaring, uncompromising and out-of-touch governments that the UK has seen since Thatcher.”

Her impact was comparable to that of another impatient youngster with a burning sense of injustice, Bernadette Devlin – the Irish nationalist returned in a by-election in Mid-Ulster in 1969. She was also 21, but added to her fame by assaulting the then home secretary, Reginald Maudling, on the floor of the House.

Black avoided such altercations, but it’s fair to say she hasn’t been able to maintain the momentum she had a few years ago (though she would have made an effective minister at Holyrood, which could do with her talents right now). She got about as far as she realistically could.

Along with the new-ish SNP leader in the Commons, the youthful and quick-witted Stephen Flynn, the pair made a stark contrast not only to some of their predecessors in London but also to the increasing chaos of the party in Scotland amid the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. Any believer in Scottish nationhood would be disappointed in the events of the last few months.

What is next for Mhairi Black?

It doesn’t sound as if she wants to stay in politics, at least for the time being. Reflecting on her decision, she points to the downside of being elected so young: “In the run-up to the next election, I’ve realised that it will be almost 10 years that I’ll have been elected. So, a third of my life I’ve spent in Westminster, which gives me the ick.”

Holyrood or party HQ would otherwise be an obvious destination. From a Labour background herself, Black once bemoaned the decline of her former party which “seems to have forgotten the very people it is supposed to represent and the very things it is supposed to fight for”.

One might also recall the long-term effect Westminster had on another “baby of the House”, Charles Kennedy, elected at 23 in 1983 and who waited two decades to become Liberal Democrat leader before dying, too young, of ongoing alcohol abuse in 2015.

Whether she feels any call of duty to help rescue things in Edinburgh, Black has now reassessed her “personal priorities.” She’ll be missed, and parliament will be the poorer for her absence.