MHAIRI Black is smiling when she arrives for our interview. She looks happy, energetic and confident. There’s no need to ask how she’s feeling now that she’s out of the Westminster bubble, but I do it anyway. “Magic,” she beams.
She obviously has no regrets about standing down as Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP at last May’s election. Later this month she’s taking her Politics Isn’t For Me show on a tour of Scotland that will last until July. Such is her celebrity status that it breaks free from the confines of the UK parliament. Life is good, she says. “I’m enjoying being away from politicians.”
She might not be entirely serious but she’s not entirely joking either. Politics brought her fame but it caused her pain too.
“I didn’t want to be the person that I would have had to become in order to survive much longer. Being in an atmosphere where you constantly have to watch your back and analyse folks’ ulterior motives … it’s almost like life becomes a very high stakes chess game.”
We talk about her family’s support for independence, its drift from Labour to the SNP and about being persuaded to take part in an independence debate while she was studying politics at Glasgow University.
By that time she had already started to campaign for independence, usually with her father, after the referendum had been announced. “It felt like a real opportunity, like Scotland could be radically different and if there was one time to get involved this was it.”
After that debate came invitations to speak at more and more Yes meetings. She described the referendum result as “like a death” but she didn’t wallow in despair for long. People began asking her to stand as an SNP candidate in the 2015 election.
“I was saying, ‘Don’t be stupid. I’m 20. That’s a ridiculous idea.’ And the more that folk were arguing with me about it, the more I was realising that I was losing the argument. I was telling myself ‘You know stuff, you’re capable, you’re articulate,’ and then ‘why shouldn’t Parliament represent folk from all different walks of life? Isn’t that exactly what we need?”’
Almost immediately after her election victory, the pressure was on to deliver her maiden speech but Black didn’t want to rush it. The incredible reaction when that speech finally came showed she was right.
Was she surprised at its reception? “Yes, definitely. My brother had come down for it and I remember looking up at him in the gallery. He was punching the air to the point that the doorkeepers were like, ‘Could you sit back?’ He was happy so I was happy.
“We went for lunch in the canteen and the head of media for the SNP came up and said ‘You’re trending in Nigeria!!’ And then I looked at my phone and it was just blowing up. The amount of mail we got from all over the world after that was incredible to the point where the staff in the office used to call it ‘that bloody speech’.”
Those early days after the SNP sent a staggering 56 MPs to Westminster were ones of camaraderie and excitement. But the experience soured when Black was signed off sick in 2017/2018.
“It was how little grace was given to me in that period, not just by some folk within the party, but also the Westminster set up is very much: ‘Oh, you’re not good enough if you’re unwell.’
“But people would never say it to my face. I would know these things [criticisms] were happening. People would tell me, and I would hear through the grapevine or whatever. But the folk never came up and said it to my face, which I just don’t have any respect for. Because I wasn’t prepared to talk about my health, I was really struck by how quickly folks started to put out their own explanations, and it would basically be briefing against me.
“There were a few in the SNP group, but the four in particular that really went to town were from the Labour Party. They were briefing that I was lazy, that I wasn’t turning up to things. I was saying, ‘You know that I’m not well, so why are you doing that?’ I talked to the Labour chief whip, who said, ‘Right, I’m going to talk to them’.
“But it continued. It went beyond the normal cut and thrust of politics. I feel like that term reduces how bad it is. It shouldn’t be like that. There’s no need for it to be like that.
“It basically feels like getting bullied. And anybody who’s experienced bullying in their life knows that it gets to the very core of who you are. In a sense I was able to cope with it because I knew politics isn’t my life and it never had been.
“This was a job, an important one, and a lot of responsibility, but it’s not my life. Whereas I think that if you want to have a long career in politics, it has to be your life, and I just wasn’t willing to do that to myself or my loved ones, basically.”
'We’re building the plane as we’re flying it’
By 2019, internal divisions were growing.
“Whether it was folk who weren’t happy with the Growth Commission, or unhappy with how we were voting on fox hunting, or whatever it was … they all kind of started coming to a head.
“I also think that the style of leadership was problematic for a lot of people because Alex Salmond had changed the constitution of the SNP and centralised a lot of the power to the office of the leader. And Nicola [Sturgeon] carried that on.
“It very much felt like there were four people in a room deciding everything, and we were just to find out when we found out. The Yes side and the SNP could have really used was much more … teamwork, I suppose, bringing in different viewpoints. ‘Let’s figure out what folks’ different areas of expertise are, and how we can manage them, and how we can use our resources the best we can’.
“There was a lot of disagreement as to how involved we should be in Westminster. I think there were times when I, the Westminster group became too focused on Westminster. To an extent that’s because that’s where you are, that’s where you’re working. But I would see folk caring about things which I thought they would not have cared about before.
“A phrase that was said to me at the start in 2015 that I thought was perfect was: ‘We’re building the plane as we’re flying it.’ And that is what it felt like. But I suppose that by the time it got to 2019 there was a feeling of, has anyone checked the plane? Do we know what direction it is going?”
Of all the internal divisions the most bitter was that arising from suggested gender recognition legislation and in particular the right to self-identify. Black is a staunch supporter of the legislation, which is currently blocked by Westminster.
Today she refuses to see the issue as a two-sided argument. “There were three [sides] to an extent. There were those of us who were up to date with party policy. There were those who, for their own dogmatic reasons, that they were really against us. And the vast majority of people were sitting in the middle going, ‘What are you talking about?’. And for me the problem was that when the bigots started getting louder, the leadership did nothing.
“The party’s women and equalities spokesperson from 2015 onwards was Angela Crawley, and I remember her coming to meetings in 2016 and saying: ‘Look, is everyone OK with this? This is what the policy is.’
“It was all shaped by thorough research, by professional opinion, by lived experience. The evidence supporting it couldn’t have been any stronger.
“What really wound me up was that there were people sitting there pontificating who hadn’t even read this stuff, and who wouldn’t read it. It was just a ‘No, don’t talk to me about it. Women are women, men are men, shut up’.”
How can the dispute be resolved? “The leadership should act, either to try and get someone to understand party policy properly, or it becomes a disciplinary issue. I asked if we had somebody who was using racist dog whistle, how would we deal with them? And the answer was, ‘We wouldn’t tolerate that at all’. So why is it OK to do it to the queer community?
‘‘I think the SNP was happy to enjoy and reap the rewards of being pro-LGBT for quite a few years. And they were very good rewards, as in, I think a lot of young people were attracted to the SNP. I think a lot of more liberal and certainly socially left-wing people were much more attracted to the SNP.
"And I also think of the credentials that came with Nicola leading the front of a Pride march. I wouldn’t be happy with someone from the SNP leading a Pride march today. When the going got tough all of that support and bravado for the LGBT community just folded.
When I ask if she’s still a member of the party her answer is pointed. “Yes … for now”.
Yah dancer, I’m not going to be an MP
Black’s immediate future is away from party politics towards comedy. It’s not a step she thought she would take. It came about when Karen Koren, artistic director at the Gilded Balloon venue in Edinburgh, suggested she stage a show at the Edinburgh Fringe.
When she agreed a General Election had not been called. When Rishi Sunak named the date as May last year her task became easier.
“I thought I’m obviously wanting to talk about Westminster, and I want to give people much more of an insight into what it’s actually like, but I want to be able to do it in a light-hearted way.
“I want to be able to talk about Westminster the way I do with my pals, the way I do in the pub, without having that the same level of scrutiny and intensity put on your every single word and deliberately being misinterpreted, or, you know, just what newspapers can do.
“And so I thought to myself, I need to put the word comedy in it, so it’s kind of a get out of jail free card, where, if any of that does happen. I can be like, ‘don’t take it too seriously’. It’s not a political talk or anything. It’s a laugh.
“For all some might be surprised, I took the job of being an MP really seriously. It’s a big responsibility, and when you are the mouthpiece for 1000s of people you think carefully about what you’re saying and how it can be misconstrued, or whether you are causing offence to somebody or whatever.
“So when Rishi called the election I thought, yah dancer, I’m not going to be an MP I can say whatever I want. It became much easier to write it.’ That show has now become a Scottish tour. Is this a one-off or will it lead to more?
“I can see the fear in my loved ones’ eyes when I say this, but I don’t really have a plan. I never have.”
I tell her I suspect that look of terror in her loved ones’ eyes is because deep down they suspect she’ll return to party politics at Holyrood.
“I’d never say never but I have no intention of standing for Holyrood and there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is, I think I’m done with party politics because of my experience of it.
“The other reason is I think I would get really restless in the Scottish Parliament, because fundamentally, I want to change society. I basically want to see Scotland become an independent republic, socialist country. And that’s not going to happen via Holyrood. That’s got to happen where the centre of power is, and that’s at Westminster.
“This isn’t to put down the work of anyone in the Scottish Parliament, but personally I can imagine myself growing frustrated that not being able to really get my teeth into changing in terms of trying to move the levers that actually change lives.”
I suggest that even with a pro-indy majority at Holyrood and a sizeable majority of SNP Scottish MPs you could argue that change is no closer.
“You could argue that,” Black says. “However, I think it actually has moved the dial in the sense that I think a lot more people are open to the idea of independence. It’s now become the norm to talk about it, whereas even in 2012 there were a lot of folks still laughing in our faces.”
Do we need a referendum to seal the deal?
“We need to be able to vote on it. If one day Westminster outlaws referendums, and the only way to show your democratic will is via an election, then so be it.
“But we’re not in that situation just yet. I’m OK waiting, if it means we get the real deal, rather than just wishing and almost forcing something into existence.
“Ultimately, if half the country doesn’t believe in independence, you’re not independent. That’s the reality of it. It’s a reality that a lot of folk are frustrated to hear and disappointed to hear, but it is reality.”
She confirms to me later that she has not gone through the necessary SNP vetting procedure for the 2026 election and so couldn’t be a candidate at this stage even if she changed her mind. Don’t interpret that as a final goodbye to politics.
She tells me: “No doubt that whatever I end up doing will still be political, because it’s in my fabric. Everything is political. But what it actually looks like? I have no idea. But that’s also half the excitement.”
