The last decade of Mhairi Black’s life tells a story of the last decade of UK politics.
The activist in her was awakened during campaigning for the independence referendum in 2014; the SNP may have lost the vote but they went on to win 56 out of 59 Scottish seats at the 2015 general election. At age 20, Black became the youngest MP in 200 years, representing Paisley and Renfrewshire South while she still had a final exam to sit to complete her Politics and Public Policy degree.
The independence campaign switched younger generations onto politics in Scotland, but it shifted debates towards identity and ideology in a way that exposed divisions in communities and families that didn’t seem to exist before. Then the whole of the UK got to enjoy a similar, even more intense experience through the Brexit campaign, vote and continuing fallout.
Through Brexit, then Covid, years of austerity evolving into a crippling cost of living crisis, handled or not by a literal handful of prime ministers, Black has enjoyed a ringside seat. And it’s worn her out.
“I’m tired,” she said last summer when she announced that she wouldn’t be standing at the next election (whenever that may be). “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 is a toxic environment.”
The Big Issue visited her office in Paisley, seven miles outside Glasgow, to find out how her
