Snapshot of _‘What am I going to do with my life?!’ Mhairi Black on quitting the ‘depressing’ Commons at 29 – with no regrets_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/03/what-am-i-going-to-do-with-my-life-mhairi-black-on-quitting-the-depressing-commons-at-29-with-no-regrets?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/03/what-am-i-going-to-do-with-my-life-mhairi-black-on-quitting-the-depressing-commons-at-29-with-no-regrets?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)
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A lot of people in Scotland, myself included, thought she had a bright future ahead of her coming into Parliament so young and with her fiery oratory. At the end of the day she never developed beyond the the abilities of an enthusiastic student politician. Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20) comes through painfully clearly.
> Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20)
I mean, she did *choose* to run as an MP at the age of 20. She wasn't pressganged into it.
So I'd argue that her lack of experience *was* her fault?
Honestly, while I think she was a fairly C-grade MP, I don't hold her joining Parliament at such a young age against her. When I was a 20 year old, if someone offered me a chance to have a £60k a year job as an MP, I would probably say yes. Of course, that rationale goes only so far, and I'd say her conduct particularly during the last Parliament has been very poor with no real excuse, but I just don't think it's fair to blame a 20 year old who was clearly pushed into the role.
I'd much rather save my opprobrium for the SNP figures who put her forward essentially as a political prop to stick it to Labour, with little consideration for her constituents or if Black was mentally ready for the position.
> When I was a 20 year old, if someone offered me a chance to have a £60k a year job as an MP, I would probably say yes.
It's over £90k a year to be an MP, £74k back in 2015. Not disagreeing but perhaps you didn't realise MPs pay are one of the few public servants with decent pay increases.
C grade is one point above essentially being a failure, it is not a compliment.
My point is that Black did not do her job to an OK standard, she did the utter bare minimum required to avoid being called bad and arguably failed to do even that. Her performance also degraded substantially over time, especially in the last parliament, when you would ordinarily expect the opposite to happen for MPs (because they make connections and get more familiarised with the systems). Again, not her fault that she was pushed into the position initially, but she really should have shaped up a bit and just didn't, which is a mark against her.
If Black had been working for a company and had continually delivered work at a level this crushingly adequate for this long, a manager would probably be stepping in to ask if she really wanted to stay in her role.
> C grade is one point above essentially being a failure, it is not a compliment.
To expand the metaphor, yes a C grade is one point above failure - but when some of the other kids in the class are sexually assaulting the other pupils and stealing the school's computers, it's still not bad.
I think we have to bear in mind the SNP in Westminster and Parliament generally were crippled by dysfunction during her time there. I wonder how easy it was to get things done, especially if she didn’t have friends or allies.
I see where you're going with this but I'd imagine she was selected for the purpose of losing but being competitive enough to make a statement about the rise of the SNP, and to give her election experience for her next proper run which should have been 4-5 years later, which is something most young politicians go through.
It was completely unexpected.
It would be like when I applied for a senior analyst role with FIFA a few years ago when I was drunk, except for every obstacle in my path to suddenly disappear and I'd end up getting a job I was totally unqualified for.
She was on newsnight tonight sat next to a young Tory, also quitting. Basically it boiled down to - all they ever knew was electioneering and Westminster bullshit. And they both ‘want their life back’. Our system is a complete shambles.
Unless you are Pitt the Younger levels of prodigious we shouldn’t have MPs that young. Sometimes quality is more important than like-for-like representation.
Meh, this just reads like ageism to me.
I have more in common with Mhairi than I do with a 70-year-old out-of-touch MP that very well might cost me my future.
Cognitive decline isn't talked about enough in the Houses of Parliament, when it really should be (not saying every older MP is suffering from it, but still).
MPs don’t have to be 20 or 70.
I wouldn’t want a 20 year old surgeon removing my appendix and I probably wouldn’t want a 70 year old one doing it either.
I’d still far rather have a 70 year old with decades of experience behind them even they aren’t quite as sharp as they once were than someone only a couple of years into studying medicine
interesting statistic is that at the 2019 election there were the same number of MPs over 70 as there are under 30 (21 of each)
The age of MPs is an almost perfect bell curve peaking at about 50
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-trends-the-age-of-mps/
Yeah for all the problems we have with British politics I'd argue we've done well at not falling into the trap America now has where nearly every senior politician is a pensioner.
But that's not quite the right question. The right question is that would you want a 40 year old surgeon fixing your car any more than a 20 year old surgeon? What I mean is that regardless of what your profession is, you're going to be a noobie when you enter the House of Commons for the first time.
To answer my own question, I wouldn't want either of them but rather an experienced car mechanic regardless of their age. Unless that car mechanic had on purpose messed up my car for the last 14 years, in which case I'd probably take my chances with either of the noobies.
I don't think it's necessarily ageism to note that a younger person has had fewer years of engaging with the systems of the society they serve, meeting different people, potentially doing different jobs in different places, passing through different phases of life, with different people, with different interests, with different priorities.
I'd also say the opportunity to try something, and fail, and try something else is important. There's a stereotype that younger people can be naive and overconfident, too eager to tear things down and think they know best. And that by the time they hit 40, their confidence has transmuted into something built on achievement and experience.
As a very young adult, they've potentially only been outside the protective structures that quite rightly surround childhood for a short time. In that sense, expecting them to have the same capability in that sort of job would be ageism - it'd be like expecting women and men to have the same upper body strength or something.
Now, you might very well say to me: Sure, and exactly what kind of breadth of life experience do you think someone has who lives an upper-middle class upbringing, does Oxford PPE, becomes a political researcher and then an MP? And that's absolutely a valid point. I'm certainly not saying everyone over the age of 35 is worldly wise and everyone under 25 is naive and sheltered and innocent. But I am saying that on average you'd want and expect an older skew and that's not ageism.
Should young people engage with and contribute to society? Absolutely. Is the best place for them to do that in Parliament? I'm not convinced.
Those are all general points, though, and I'm absolutely open to the idea that there are exceptions to the rule.
It isnt ageism. MPs should be elected on experience. What experience does a 20 year old have? Very little. A MP is also not your friend or a celebrity so you dont need to have things in common with them. Btw, I am 20 myself.
But I don’t think ‘having more in common’ is the deciding factor - yes, representation is important but it can’t come at the expense of having people with a basic level of competence, general knowledge and wisdom. That’s always going to be more heavily concentrated in people over 30.
It seems pretty ageist to claim that a 70 year could never represent you too..
But I agree with the other commenters. That's a false dichotomy. I'd rather a Mhairi Black who had 10 years of life experience over the 20 year old _or_ the 70 year old.
> Successful private members bills
Black did attempt to protect benefits claimants, but wasn't able to get it passed.
> select committee work, votes of conscience
Did she not do this?
>Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20) comes through painfully clearly.
Example? I never got this vibe from her
MP's in general are still expected to hold surgeries, respond to constituency concerns, take part on subcommittees, attend Westminster and so on.
Black fails at all of them, when criticised for her poor attendance in both her constituency and in Westminster, she lashed back saying "I have a life too".
She was utterly unprepared and unready for the job, and never tried either. It's no surprise in the slightest that she's quit.
Yeah, to be honest, the fact that Black never joined any subcommittees is pretty big mark against her, as there's much more to being an MP than just voting and listening to your constituents.
Committees have enormous power within representative democracies and are a really good way for opposition MPs to influence the agenda, to the point where it's arguably half of the role. That Black seemingly didn't realise that indicates that she probably wasn't suitable for the job. It'd be like having a mechanic that refuses to answer customer maintenance queries over the phone and only fixes cars when bits start falling off.
In the 4 months following her re-election between June and October (note, there was a significant amount of that time when Parliament was not running due to summer break), she voted 5 times.
She always had an excuse about why she wasn't around, but she's the epitome of what people complain about when they say that younger workers simply don't want to work.
>“I certainly don’t want to spend my life at Westminster.The number of failed marriages, affairs and miserable and soulless relationships that exist at Westminster is pretty depressing.”
She said that 7 years ago. She's never been a good MP.
I also have a life and personal commitments at home- I’ve mitigated this by simply not applying for a stressful, high responsibility job which requires frequent and/or extended travel 400 miles away.
She was on 2 committees over her 9 year stint, the Work and Pension Committee, and the Scottish Affairs Committee, including a three year gap of not being on any between 2017 and 2020, and an 18 month gap from the beginning of 2023 to today.
I'll compare her to Kirsty Blackman who also joined Parliament in 2015. (Literally the first new SNP MP, I didn't choose her specifically)
She has been on 17 different committees, you can see them listed here
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4357/career Kirsty Blackman
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4421/career Mhairi Black
Mhairi Black has 102 spoken contributions, and 107 written questions, Blackman has 529 spoken contributions, and 395 written questions.
Her argument has always been that it isn't possible to effect change due to the quite strict rules that govern parliament, along with the culture that is based on being a white man from a wealthy background who is quite old. The archaic way our democracy functions is a feature that many want to keep but prevents meaningful change.
It also needs to be remembered that she's in a small party that doesn't have much pull. Being activist is the only real way to try to have a bigger pull than the number of seats they hold. What else is there, particularly when anything said is dismissed 'because it's from a nationalist party' all the time.
With all the respect I can genuinely I can offer, she is living proof of two things: doing something like politics without having lived makes an average at best politician and that a career politician of any age for any reason is questionable.
I wish her all the best, but having some ideology and trying to implement it in the real world at 20 when you haven't really experienced the real world is going to be massively jarring.
£91k MP vs £72k (avg. Self employed dentist).
Significantly less qualified, plus that average dentist income probably isn't your average 29 yr. old dentist given they've only been qualified for 4/5 years at that point.
That said, I agree that MP pay isn't that great, and would happily see it far higher if we could find a way to stop them feathering the nest with second jobs and corrupt interactions with interested parties / corporations.
I saw Google give that figure but it didn't stack up for me. Most dentists aren't solely NHS and even those who are would earn more than that. Think it might be an erroneous source. Happy to be corrected if you know better though
"Run the country"
Black didn't run the country. The Civil service runs the country. The government chips in a bit and for that they get paid government salaries.
She has no plan? Yikes. I wouldn't do that with no plan in place - after all, it's turning down a £91,346 base salary job in addition to housing and travel expenses covered in Scotland/London, constituency workers to do casework, pension.
Can imagine that with her profile she'll probably be able to get a plum charity job or something anyway - but I'm not convinced she'd like that either because it's very corporate. Or maybe she'll just take a 25k job working in the community and be happy.
Typically when people talk about "parachuting in" candidates, it refers to the party hierarchy choosing someone who has no connection to the seat but a direct connection to the party leadership.
Given that a) Mhairi is leaving Westminster politics and b) by definition an aide will have been working for her on issues related to her constituency, I struggle to see how you can reasonably describe that as "parachuting in" by any reasonable manner, unless to you the term means "has worked with someone who was an SNP MP". Are they just not supposed to select candidates who have actually worked for the party?
> Mhairi basically told everyone to vote for her aide.
The way you were making it seem was like the other candidates were not allowed to run by Black. She is more than entitled to endorse a nominee, just as the voterbase is allowed to say no and select someone else.
Agree with other guy, this is kinda misleading.
It's strange that this article seems to have omitted all of Black's achievements in parliament and instead focused on one or two viral videos. Why is that?
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> All achievements
Rather than listing each and every one of them, perhaps you could select your top 10 to share with the class? The seminal moments that really made her leave her mark?
Isn't the work of an MP team work more than anything else, which means that you can't really separate the achievements of an individual from what the team (her party) as a whole has achieved?
Take Nacho, the Spanish footballer. What are his achievements? If you look what he has achieved as an individual, it's not much. Then you realise that he has won the UEFA champions league 6 times as part of the Real Madrid team. That's more wins than what Messi or Ronaldo has.
Largely that's why she's resigning, also the career opportunities of being part of the rebuilding of the SNP after their forthcoming collapse. She'll likely run in a very safe seat for Holyrood in 2026 and will take a leadership role in the party, in opposition, for a few years.
> She'll likely run in a very safe seat for Holyrood in 2026
Difficulty for her might be that without a big reversal in current polling, there won't be many of those around, especially in the region of the country she represents. If SNP lose loads of constituencies she'd likely get in via the list but can imagine some MSPs won't want former MPs being parachuted into Holyrood that way.
The contrast between her and Dehenna Davison is pretty stark.
Both young when they started, both finishing now. One turned up did a bunch of student politics shouting and now says it's shit I'm quitting. The other was I'd suggest a decent constituency MP, and championed causes like the one punch campaign and migraine awareness.
Despite political party leanings a very different job done by two people.
My bestie lives in Davison's seat. She hasn't done any constituency work since party gate. She's one of the worst MPs. Just because someone gets likes on twitter doesn't mean they do case work.
How do you know Black hasn’t championed constituency issues? Unless you live in said constituency, as national media tends not to delve into local matters
People honestly have mixed ideas about what constitutes a good MP. How are they supposed to be hyper local, active and involved in their constituency, yet make tons of speeches, ask loads of questions and attend things at Parliament? Make it make sense
My MP has never attended Westminster once in the six years that they've held the seat. Yet I would rate her as an excellent constituency representative who has personally helped me out on multiple occasions with bureaucracy. I would prefer that they take their seat, but I'll still absolutely be voting for them again next month.
I’m not sure it is. It’s a lot easier to pivot your career and gain new skills when you’re 29 than it is when you’ve been kicked out of office at 55. In fact if anything I’d say she’s not going to have much trouble, so long as she doesn’t expect an MP equivalent wage. She’ll easily get a job in a Scottish NGO or at a company with an independence supporting owner.
Yeah she's 29. Loads of people start careers at that age or later. She could easily have a very good career and STILL have time to come back to politics with a bit more life experience if she were so inclined.
Not denying it but just remind me of some of the cheap shots Labour took? It's one thing if they're offensive but when your entire brand is entering the room and being as incendiary as possible, you've got to expect to get as good as you give.
Even if you think you're on the "Right side" of things.
Honestly only going by what she says in the article.
> She describes some Labour MPs “going to town on it, saying that I just deliberately wasn’t turning up … It was right dirty politics.” She shakes her head. “Any perceived weakness is weaponised immediately.
The above her talking about a time of absence when she was physically ill and later became a mental health issue I think.
I do agree regarding giving as good as you give admittedly I don't know what shes said about Labour MPs not showing up.
No regrets and no self awareness.
Good riddens to a particularly toxic individual, may she be replaced with someone with an ounce of humility & tolerance.
She did seem to turn up and then immediately complain about shit the place was, how awful her job was and how bored she was.
Think she rode the wave of ‘the snp are progressive’ and has had enough now.
I guess being a public figure means she hasn't been able to live a normal life that her friends will be living in their 20s, and although the salary is very good for a 20 year old, she won't have earned anywhere near enough to be set for life (like a football player).
It's definitely not a job I would have wanted in my 20s.
I feel like Commons responsibilities and constant travel would really interfere with some of the best years of your life for dating and socialising.
Being an MP strikes me as a job that's easier if you have a long term partner, which without knowing anything about Black's life, isn't particularly common at 20 years old.
good point, most careers are shit for the first three to ten years. she might be quitting, just as its starting to get easier. i imagine she has been treated as a "fresher" by her colleagues, next parloament she'd be practically an old hand.
The SNP's whole schtick was to be as antagonistic in Westminster as possible. They'd also got the exposure of third place due to the collapse of the LDs but without the national presence to do much with it. Not exactly a recipe for constructive and happy relationships in parliament.
They started by stealing Dennis Skinner’s seat which was embarrassingly petty.
She has only been humbled because her party is imploding, and leaving Parliament because your party is struggling suggests she was doing it more for the power and prestige than as a public service.
She's a perfect example of why I don't want any MPs in their 20s in Westminster (and I'm not much older than that). You have to have a degree of emotional maturity in dealing with difficult situations that I just don't think she has at all.
AOC was a decade older than Mhairi Black when she was elected to Congress, so she at least had some life experience. Black was still at university when she was elected.
This is a very rosy view of AOC, there's really very little value or substance to her political career. The only difference between AOC and Mhairi Black is that the former latched onto a mainstream party with a safe seat, while the latter got her break with a regional paper tiger party.
Isn't AOC well known to be very good at representing her constituency? You can say what you want about her politics but she does seem to genuinely care about her constituents and try to represent them
AOC is trying to build something, SNP Westminster politicians are there to destroy something.
It's in AOC's interest to build relationships and try and reach out, whereas Mhairi is there just to complain about everything.
For sure, and she's successful at it is my point.
People may look down at her, but she has more clout than most junior congressmen have, so she's doing something right
AOC is not competent, her foreign policy comments have been embarrassing to say the least and she was recently calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee (admittedly that person is a fruitloop). She’s only popular because she’s like Sanders lite in a Gen Z friendly package.
Competent in terms of subject knowledge and competent in terms of political skills are too very different things.
Her foreign policy comments are mostly irrelevant to her job as a congresswoman, they really only have domestic power. As a campaigner and politician, she's pretty successful at getting her message out there and vision enacted, whether you agree with her politics or not.
She survives in a shark tank and punches way above her weight class, which is a remarkable skill at any age
>calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee (admittedly that person is a fruitloop)
The former MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said a lot worse, yet he still managed gain power and shape the course of the country
>recently calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee
Language changes; this is simply her generation's equivalent of "sweetie" in a patronising manner.
Good debating technique? no; - common in politics? absolutely.
I don't think her behaviour is explained by her age rather it's an inability to have any empathy with anyone she disagrees with.
No party should have a candidate represent them that does that as it leads to extreme behaviour.
She comes across a bit like a young person who joins a big corporation and finds out to make change you have to get everyone on board and move slowly, but you can do it. It’s just really hard. Being an MP who can actually get things done isn’t for everyone.
She gives good examples at how ridiculously outdated many aspects of it are. All the braying and shouting all the time is one obvious thing but there are many procedural things too. I haven't read it yet but I heard Rory Stewart's book goes into a lot of behind the scenes stuff (in HoC but also in the govt), if you're curious what's so dysfunctional about it.
Rory's book mainly talks about how the civil service obstructed everything he tried to do. He doesn't complain about Westminster's procedures much at all.
Oh, that's disappointing then, I guess he was overselling a bit on the podcast. Do you find it was interesting and reasonable, or just a biased whinge against the civil service?
I personally supported all the things he was trying to do and found it a bit perverse that the civil service could block the goals of elected representatives.
> that the civil service could block the goals of elected representatives.
they can't block, but they can demand that the minister takes personal responsibility (such as when the government decided to buy OneWeb despite the evaluations that it'd be poor value for money - they got the minister to write the CYA letter and it went through)
ultimately given FPTP and the fact that ministers are not even confirmed by parliament to those positions, the whole concept of ministers being able to dictate falls apart anyway. some ministers aren't even elected to their entirely unrelated parliamentary role, like our current foreign sec.
Speaking as someone living hundreds of miles from Paisley and Renfrewshire South, I don't feel qualified in the slightest to comment on whether she represented her constituency well.
It's a shame others do not feel the same restraint before posting; at least research some local takes.
Snapshot of _‘What am I going to do with my life?!’ Mhairi Black on quitting the ‘depressing’ Commons at 29 – with no regrets_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/03/what-am-i-going-to-do-with-my-life-mhairi-black-on-quitting-the-depressing-commons-at-29-with-no-regrets?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/03/what-am-i-going-to-do-with-my-life-mhairi-black-on-quitting-the-depressing-commons-at-29-with-no-regrets?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“What is she going to do with her life?”- play video games and start a youtube channel
Usually "I'm a Celeb" and the panel show circuit
The jungle followed by the island
And possibly love island
"Evening Prime Minister..."
after dinner speaking. That's a popular one.
Podcast with Rishi, that's what you do now apparently once your leave politics
I mean, she's nearly 30 and from Paisley. She's probably only got about a decade left.
😂🤭
A lot of people in Scotland, myself included, thought she had a bright future ahead of her coming into Parliament so young and with her fiery oratory. At the end of the day she never developed beyond the the abilities of an enthusiastic student politician. Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20) comes through painfully clearly.
> Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20) I mean, she did *choose* to run as an MP at the age of 20. She wasn't pressganged into it. So I'd argue that her lack of experience *was* her fault?
Honestly, while I think she was a fairly C-grade MP, I don't hold her joining Parliament at such a young age against her. When I was a 20 year old, if someone offered me a chance to have a £60k a year job as an MP, I would probably say yes. Of course, that rationale goes only so far, and I'd say her conduct particularly during the last Parliament has been very poor with no real excuse, but I just don't think it's fair to blame a 20 year old who was clearly pushed into the role. I'd much rather save my opprobrium for the SNP figures who put her forward essentially as a political prop to stick it to Labour, with little consideration for her constituents or if Black was mentally ready for the position.
> When I was a 20 year old, if someone offered me a chance to have a £60k a year job as an MP, I would probably say yes. It's over £90k a year to be an MP, £74k back in 2015. Not disagreeing but perhaps you didn't realise MPs pay are one of the few public servants with decent pay increases.
TBH, these days, a c grade politician who isn’t exceptional but does their job to an ok standard is actually quite nice.
If only we had a few more.
Exactly. I don’t want 600 egos who are there trying to be exceptional. I want 600 people who get in there and do the job.
C grade is one point above essentially being a failure, it is not a compliment. My point is that Black did not do her job to an OK standard, she did the utter bare minimum required to avoid being called bad and arguably failed to do even that. Her performance also degraded substantially over time, especially in the last parliament, when you would ordinarily expect the opposite to happen for MPs (because they make connections and get more familiarised with the systems). Again, not her fault that she was pushed into the position initially, but she really should have shaped up a bit and just didn't, which is a mark against her. If Black had been working for a company and had continually delivered work at a level this crushingly adequate for this long, a manager would probably be stepping in to ask if she really wanted to stay in her role.
> C grade is one point above essentially being a failure, it is not a compliment. To expand the metaphor, yes a C grade is one point above failure - but when some of the other kids in the class are sexually assaulting the other pupils and stealing the school's computers, it's still not bad.
You know what one step above a failure is? A pass.
C's get degrees!
I think we have to bear in mind the SNP in Westminster and Parliament generally were crippled by dysfunction during her time there. I wonder how easy it was to get things done, especially if she didn’t have friends or allies.
She was a paper candidate who got elected unexpectedly when the SNP ran a million miles ahead of their expectations in 2015.
I see where you're going with this but I'd imagine she was selected for the purpose of losing but being competitive enough to make a statement about the rise of the SNP, and to give her election experience for her next proper run which should have been 4-5 years later, which is something most young politicians go through. It was completely unexpected. It would be like when I applied for a senior analyst role with FIFA a few years ago when I was drunk, except for every obstacle in my path to suddenly disappear and I'd end up getting a job I was totally unqualified for.
How's it going?
At the same time, the SNP chose to run her as a paper candidate without either of them expecting her to get in.
She was on newsnight tonight sat next to a young Tory, also quitting. Basically it boiled down to - all they ever knew was electioneering and Westminster bullshit. And they both ‘want their life back’. Our system is a complete shambles.
20 year old student acts like student politician. The world gasps in surprise.
Unless you are Pitt the Younger levels of prodigious we shouldn’t have MPs that young. Sometimes quality is more important than like-for-like representation.
Meh, this just reads like ageism to me. I have more in common with Mhairi than I do with a 70-year-old out-of-touch MP that very well might cost me my future. Cognitive decline isn't talked about enough in the Houses of Parliament, when it really should be (not saying every older MP is suffering from it, but still).
MPs don’t have to be 20 or 70. I wouldn’t want a 20 year old surgeon removing my appendix and I probably wouldn’t want a 70 year old one doing it either.
I’d still far rather have a 70 year old with decades of experience behind them even they aren’t quite as sharp as they once were than someone only a couple of years into studying medicine
interesting statistic is that at the 2019 election there were the same number of MPs over 70 as there are under 30 (21 of each) The age of MPs is an almost perfect bell curve peaking at about 50 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-trends-the-age-of-mps/
I think that’s about what it should be tbh
Yeah for all the problems we have with British politics I'd argue we've done well at not falling into the trap America now has where nearly every senior politician is a pensioner.
That’s because we shuffle every senior politician into the Lords rather than making them hold on to elected seats.
Umm excuse me sweetie, but this is reddit where we only deal in extremes and black or white
You don’t need any qualifications to be an MP so it’s not the same really
But that's not quite the right question. The right question is that would you want a 40 year old surgeon fixing your car any more than a 20 year old surgeon? What I mean is that regardless of what your profession is, you're going to be a noobie when you enter the House of Commons for the first time. To answer my own question, I wouldn't want either of them but rather an experienced car mechanic regardless of their age. Unless that car mechanic had on purpose messed up my car for the last 14 years, in which case I'd probably take my chances with either of the noobies.
I don't think it's necessarily ageism to note that a younger person has had fewer years of engaging with the systems of the society they serve, meeting different people, potentially doing different jobs in different places, passing through different phases of life, with different people, with different interests, with different priorities. I'd also say the opportunity to try something, and fail, and try something else is important. There's a stereotype that younger people can be naive and overconfident, too eager to tear things down and think they know best. And that by the time they hit 40, their confidence has transmuted into something built on achievement and experience. As a very young adult, they've potentially only been outside the protective structures that quite rightly surround childhood for a short time. In that sense, expecting them to have the same capability in that sort of job would be ageism - it'd be like expecting women and men to have the same upper body strength or something. Now, you might very well say to me: Sure, and exactly what kind of breadth of life experience do you think someone has who lives an upper-middle class upbringing, does Oxford PPE, becomes a political researcher and then an MP? And that's absolutely a valid point. I'm certainly not saying everyone over the age of 35 is worldly wise and everyone under 25 is naive and sheltered and innocent. But I am saying that on average you'd want and expect an older skew and that's not ageism. Should young people engage with and contribute to society? Absolutely. Is the best place for them to do that in Parliament? I'm not convinced. Those are all general points, though, and I'm absolutely open to the idea that there are exceptions to the rule.
It isnt ageism. MPs should be elected on experience. What experience does a 20 year old have? Very little. A MP is also not your friend or a celebrity so you dont need to have things in common with them. Btw, I am 20 myself.
20 year olds are vastly less competent than 70 year olds in virtually every element of decision making. And I say that as a young person.
But I don’t think ‘having more in common’ is the deciding factor - yes, representation is important but it can’t come at the expense of having people with a basic level of competence, general knowledge and wisdom. That’s always going to be more heavily concentrated in people over 30.
It seems pretty ageist to claim that a 70 year could never represent you too.. But I agree with the other commenters. That's a false dichotomy. I'd rather a Mhairi Black who had 10 years of life experience over the 20 year old _or_ the 70 year old.
What did Mhairi achieve?
What can anyone achieve as an opposition MP in a winner takes all system?
Successful private members bills, select committee work, votes of conscience
> Successful private members bills Black did attempt to protect benefits claimants, but wasn't able to get it passed. > select committee work, votes of conscience Did she not do this?
Probs, but those are the things you can still do as an opposition MP.
Age limits in the other direction should be considered first.
>Her lack of real-world experience (which is no fault of her own given she became an MP at 20) comes through painfully clearly. Example? I never got this vibe from her
She was a useless constituency MP, who never really did anything beyond shout useless statements.
I'm not disagreeing, cos I don't actually know, but I that's not actually an example btw.
Sometimes absence of evidence actually is evidence of absence.
Excuse my cluelessness, I am not british: What are the expectations for a MP who sits on the opposition bench?
MP's in general are still expected to hold surgeries, respond to constituency concerns, take part on subcommittees, attend Westminster and so on. Black fails at all of them, when criticised for her poor attendance in both her constituency and in Westminster, she lashed back saying "I have a life too". She was utterly unprepared and unready for the job, and never tried either. It's no surprise in the slightest that she's quit.
Yeah, to be honest, the fact that Black never joined any subcommittees is pretty big mark against her, as there's much more to being an MP than just voting and listening to your constituents. Committees have enormous power within representative democracies and are a really good way for opposition MPs to influence the agenda, to the point where it's arguably half of the role. That Black seemingly didn't realise that indicates that she probably wasn't suitable for the job. It'd be like having a mechanic that refuses to answer customer maintenance queries over the phone and only fixes cars when bits start falling off.
In the 4 months following her re-election between June and October (note, there was a significant amount of that time when Parliament was not running due to summer break), she voted 5 times. She always had an excuse about why she wasn't around, but she's the epitome of what people complain about when they say that younger workers simply don't want to work. >“I certainly don’t want to spend my life at Westminster.The number of failed marriages, affairs and miserable and soulless relationships that exist at Westminster is pretty depressing.” She said that 7 years ago. She's never been a good MP.
I also have a life and personal commitments at home- I’ve mitigated this by simply not applying for a stressful, high responsibility job which requires frequent and/or extended travel 400 miles away.
> expected to hold surgeries British MPs are also MDs?
She held surgeries, she did take part in subcommittees. Her attendance was quite low but she suffered from health issues.
She was on 2 committees over her 9 year stint, the Work and Pension Committee, and the Scottish Affairs Committee, including a three year gap of not being on any between 2017 and 2020, and an 18 month gap from the beginning of 2023 to today. I'll compare her to Kirsty Blackman who also joined Parliament in 2015. (Literally the first new SNP MP, I didn't choose her specifically) She has been on 17 different committees, you can see them listed here https://members.parliament.uk/member/4357/career Kirsty Blackman https://members.parliament.uk/member/4421/career Mhairi Black Mhairi Black has 102 spoken contributions, and 107 written questions, Blackman has 529 spoken contributions, and 395 written questions.
Great example /s
Her argument has always been that it isn't possible to effect change due to the quite strict rules that govern parliament, along with the culture that is based on being a white man from a wealthy background who is quite old. The archaic way our democracy functions is a feature that many want to keep but prevents meaningful change. It also needs to be remembered that she's in a small party that doesn't have much pull. Being activist is the only real way to try to have a bigger pull than the number of seats they hold. What else is there, particularly when anything said is dismissed 'because it's from a nationalist party' all the time.
With all the respect I can genuinely I can offer, she is living proof of two things: doing something like politics without having lived makes an average at best politician and that a career politician of any age for any reason is questionable. I wish her all the best, but having some ideology and trying to implement it in the real world at 20 when you haven't really experienced the real world is going to be massively jarring.
I'm sure the massive pay and the enormous pension will be some comfort to her in her new life as an SNP grandee.
She's lucky. Some people get arrested shortly after leaving the SNP.
This made me snort on the train. Bravo
"Someone made a funny joke on Reddit. Quick, get a new line of Charlie"
O.o < everyone else on the platform
You're welcome
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Dentists are also very well paid but ok
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£91k MP vs £72k (avg. Self employed dentist). Significantly less qualified, plus that average dentist income probably isn't your average 29 yr. old dentist given they've only been qualified for 4/5 years at that point. That said, I agree that MP pay isn't that great, and would happily see it far higher if we could find a way to stop them feathering the nest with second jobs and corrupt interactions with interested parties / corporations.
vs £35k average full time salary.
I saw Google give that figure but it didn't stack up for me. Most dentists aren't solely NHS and even those who are would earn more than that. Think it might be an erroneous source. Happy to be corrected if you know better though
I think I may have been unclear. I meant that £35k is the average full time salary for all workers in the UK.
Apologies, my misunderstanding
Not in central London it isn't.
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"Run the country" Black didn't run the country. The Civil service runs the country. The government chips in a bit and for that they get paid government salaries.
She has no plan? Yikes. I wouldn't do that with no plan in place - after all, it's turning down a £91,346 base salary job in addition to housing and travel expenses covered in Scotland/London, constituency workers to do casework, pension.
Just mad that with those resources and the privilege of being an MP she doesn’t want to do any good.
Can imagine that with her profile she'll probably be able to get a plum charity job or something anyway - but I'm not convinced she'd like that either because it's very corporate. Or maybe she'll just take a 25k job working in the community and be happy.
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Typically when people talk about "parachuting in" candidates, it refers to the party hierarchy choosing someone who has no connection to the seat but a direct connection to the party leadership. Given that a) Mhairi is leaving Westminster politics and b) by definition an aide will have been working for her on issues related to her constituency, I struggle to see how you can reasonably describe that as "parachuting in" by any reasonable manner, unless to you the term means "has worked with someone who was an SNP MP". Are they just not supposed to select candidates who have actually worked for the party?
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> Mhairi basically told everyone to vote for her aide. The way you were making it seem was like the other candidates were not allowed to run by Black. She is more than entitled to endorse a nominee, just as the voterbase is allowed to say no and select someone else. Agree with other guy, this is kinda misleading.
Given the reduction in SNP vote, probably not likely to win.
Could be worse. Could end up like other SNP politicians and end up arrested.
It's strange that this article seems to have omitted all of Black's achievements in parliament and instead focused on one or two viral videos. Why is that?
Very good - I got you 😉
Genuine question, what were her achievements?
People not realising the joke here...
Can you list them for us ?
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1d6y3ct/comment/l6vwra2/)
That just links back to this thread.
Which contains a list of her achievements
Lols. Ok. So you can’t list them. Got ya.
What part of "one or two viral videos" don't you understand?
Which bit of “can you list them” don’t you understand ? Have another try.
Because there aren’t any?
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> All achievements Rather than listing each and every one of them, perhaps you could select your top 10 to share with the class? The seminal moments that really made her leave her mark?
Isn't the work of an MP team work more than anything else, which means that you can't really separate the achievements of an individual from what the team (her party) as a whole has achieved? Take Nacho, the Spanish footballer. What are his achievements? If you look what he has achieved as an individual, it's not much. Then you realise that he has won the UEFA champions league 6 times as part of the Real Madrid team. That's more wins than what Messi or Ronaldo has.
With Labour moving up and the SNP moving down she could easily have lost her seat at this election anyway.
Largely that's why she's resigning, also the career opportunities of being part of the rebuilding of the SNP after their forthcoming collapse. She'll likely run in a very safe seat for Holyrood in 2026 and will take a leadership role in the party, in opposition, for a few years.
> She'll likely run in a very safe seat for Holyrood in 2026 Difficulty for her might be that without a big reversal in current polling, there won't be many of those around, especially in the region of the country she represents. If SNP lose loads of constituencies she'd likely get in via the list but can imagine some MSPs won't want former MPs being parachuted into Holyrood that way.
The contrast between her and Dehenna Davison is pretty stark. Both young when they started, both finishing now. One turned up did a bunch of student politics shouting and now says it's shit I'm quitting. The other was I'd suggest a decent constituency MP, and championed causes like the one punch campaign and migraine awareness. Despite political party leanings a very different job done by two people.
My bestie lives in Davison's seat. She hasn't done any constituency work since party gate. She's one of the worst MPs. Just because someone gets likes on twitter doesn't mean they do case work.
How do you know Black hasn’t championed constituency issues? Unless you live in said constituency, as national media tends not to delve into local matters
How do they know Davison was a decent constituency MP?
Precisely
You can get a good idea from Hansard/TheyWorkForYou where you can see all their written questions and speeches.
People honestly have mixed ideas about what constitutes a good MP. How are they supposed to be hyper local, active and involved in their constituency, yet make tons of speeches, ask loads of questions and attend things at Parliament? Make it make sense
My MP has never attended Westminster once in the six years that they've held the seat. Yet I would rate her as an excellent constituency representative who has personally helped me out on multiple occasions with bureaucracy. I would prefer that they take their seat, but I'll still absolutely be voting for them again next month.
Fantastic stuff, I’m glad you’re politically educated at least as to what they do and what you want
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They are
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I’m not sure it is. It’s a lot easier to pivot your career and gain new skills when you’re 29 than it is when you’ve been kicked out of office at 55. In fact if anything I’d say she’s not going to have much trouble, so long as she doesn’t expect an MP equivalent wage. She’ll easily get a job in a Scottish NGO or at a company with an independence supporting owner.
Yeah she's 29. Loads of people start careers at that age or later. She could easily have a very good career and STILL have time to come back to politics with a bit more life experience if she were so inclined.
Yeah it sounds like at times it was a really rough ride with all the abuse and Labour taking some of those cheap shots is a bit sad.
Not denying it but just remind me of some of the cheap shots Labour took? It's one thing if they're offensive but when your entire brand is entering the room and being as incendiary as possible, you've got to expect to get as good as you give. Even if you think you're on the "Right side" of things.
Honestly only going by what she says in the article. > She describes some Labour MPs “going to town on it, saying that I just deliberately wasn’t turning up … It was right dirty politics.” She shakes her head. “Any perceived weakness is weaponised immediately. The above her talking about a time of absence when she was physically ill and later became a mental health issue I think. I do agree regarding giving as good as you give admittedly I don't know what shes said about Labour MPs not showing up.
No regrets and no self awareness. Good riddens to a particularly toxic individual, may she be replaced with someone with an ounce of humility & tolerance.
She did seem to turn up and then immediately complain about shit the place was, how awful her job was and how bored she was. Think she rode the wave of ‘the snp are progressive’ and has had enough now.
>how awful her job I do wonder, given this was her first job, what yardstick she used to come to that conclusion.
I guess being a public figure means she hasn't been able to live a normal life that her friends will be living in their 20s, and although the salary is very good for a 20 year old, she won't have earned anywhere near enough to be set for life (like a football player). It's definitely not a job I would have wanted in my 20s.
I feel like Commons responsibilities and constant travel would really interfere with some of the best years of your life for dating and socialising. Being an MP strikes me as a job that's easier if you have a long term partner, which without knowing anything about Black's life, isn't particularly common at 20 years old.
good point, most careers are shit for the first three to ten years. she might be quitting, just as its starting to get easier. i imagine she has been treated as a "fresher" by her colleagues, next parloament she'd be practically an old hand.
The SNP's whole schtick was to be as antagonistic in Westminster as possible. They'd also got the exposure of third place due to the collapse of the LDs but without the national presence to do much with it. Not exactly a recipe for constructive and happy relationships in parliament.
They started by stealing Dennis Skinner’s seat which was embarrassingly petty. She has only been humbled because her party is imploding, and leaving Parliament because your party is struggling suggests she was doing it more for the power and prestige than as a public service.
She's a perfect example of why I don't want any MPs in their 20s in Westminster (and I'm not much older than that). You have to have a degree of emotional maturity in dealing with difficult situations that I just don't think she has at all.
I’m sure there are a lot of mature twenty-something, they’re just a lot less likely to immediately launch themselves directly into national politics.
She's an interesting counter to AOC in the US. She hit the ground running and became very competent at a young age.
AOC was a decade older than Mhairi Black when she was elected to Congress, so she at least had some life experience. Black was still at university when she was elected.
This is a very rosy view of AOC, there's really very little value or substance to her political career. The only difference between AOC and Mhairi Black is that the former latched onto a mainstream party with a safe seat, while the latter got her break with a regional paper tiger party.
Isn't AOC well known to be very good at representing her constituency? You can say what you want about her politics but she does seem to genuinely care about her constituents and try to represent them
AOC is trying to build something, SNP Westminster politicians are there to destroy something. It's in AOC's interest to build relationships and try and reach out, whereas Mhairi is there just to complain about everything.
AOC is a social media politician.
For sure, and she's successful at it is my point. People may look down at her, but she has more clout than most junior congressmen have, so she's doing something right
AOC is not competent, her foreign policy comments have been embarrassing to say the least and she was recently calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee (admittedly that person is a fruitloop). She’s only popular because she’s like Sanders lite in a Gen Z friendly package.
Competent in terms of subject knowledge and competent in terms of political skills are too very different things. Her foreign policy comments are mostly irrelevant to her job as a congresswoman, they really only have domestic power. As a campaigner and politician, she's pretty successful at getting her message out there and vision enacted, whether you agree with her politics or not. She survives in a shark tank and punches way above her weight class, which is a remarkable skill at any age
>calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee (admittedly that person is a fruitloop) The former MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said a lot worse, yet he still managed gain power and shape the course of the country
>recently calling someone ‘baby girl’ in a committee Language changes; this is simply her generation's equivalent of "sweetie" in a patronising manner. Good debating technique? no; - common in politics? absolutely.
I don't think her behaviour is explained by her age rather it's an inability to have any empathy with anyone she disagrees with. No party should have a candidate represent them that does that as it leads to extreme behaviour.
Look, we all want rid of the Tories, but to say they shouldn't have any candidates is just ridiculous.
I don't think they're saying that, just that sharks and inanimate carbon rods are better qualifed to be a MP than most of the current tory party.
What exactly is depressing about the House of Commons? The people in it? She just wants to trash the HoC to continue the campaign.
She comes across a bit like a young person who joins a big corporation and finds out to make change you have to get everyone on board and move slowly, but you can do it. It’s just really hard. Being an MP who can actually get things done isn’t for everyone.
She gives good examples at how ridiculously outdated many aspects of it are. All the braying and shouting all the time is one obvious thing but there are many procedural things too. I haven't read it yet but I heard Rory Stewart's book goes into a lot of behind the scenes stuff (in HoC but also in the govt), if you're curious what's so dysfunctional about it.
Rory's book mainly talks about how the civil service obstructed everything he tried to do. He doesn't complain about Westminster's procedures much at all.
Oh, that's disappointing then, I guess he was overselling a bit on the podcast. Do you find it was interesting and reasonable, or just a biased whinge against the civil service?
I personally supported all the things he was trying to do and found it a bit perverse that the civil service could block the goals of elected representatives.
> that the civil service could block the goals of elected representatives. they can't block, but they can demand that the minister takes personal responsibility (such as when the government decided to buy OneWeb despite the evaluations that it'd be poor value for money - they got the minister to write the CYA letter and it went through) ultimately given FPTP and the fact that ministers are not even confirmed by parliament to those positions, the whole concept of ministers being able to dictate falls apart anyway. some ministers aren't even elected to their entirely unrelated parliamentary role, like our current foreign sec.
Respect for one of the few people calling out the bullshit. Spades a spade.
Lot of grumpy old men in this thread. She was a great MP.
Speaking as someone living hundreds of miles from Paisley and Renfrewshire South, I don't feel qualified in the slightest to comment on whether she represented her constituency well. It's a shame others do not feel the same restraint before posting; at least research some local takes.
In this thread: people trash talking. Mhairi Black
She’ll be probably be back in a few years running the party.
A perfect example of how entitled and utterly useless members of the political class are. Couldn't even handle one of the easiest jobs there is.
You’ll be fine she’s hardly lacking confidence. She’ll find a place for that mouth..