The message on an ill wind
It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.
But you live and learn. At least, some of us do.
When you see who’s interviewing Mhairi Black for the fluff piece in today’s National, obviously you don’t expect any sort of interrogation or introspection. But even going in with super-low expectations it’s a pretty gross example of the sort of insubstantial yet manky “dust bunny” you find under a sofa that hasn’t been hoovered in a few years.
It starts off pretty wretchedly:
Well, isn’t that nice? Black’s enjoying being a “celebrity” instead of having to do any actual work. Because sometimes work is difficult, not fun, and that wouldn’t do, would it? Not when you could turn your back on the people who elected you three times to win their nation back for them, and just gallivant around the country getting paid to laugh and joke about how miserably you failed at it.
Black basically admits that she just wasn’t cut out for the life of a politician.
And that’s fair enough. She got elected when she was 20, with no life experience or chance to build some mental strength before being thrown into the bearpit. And it turned out she’d been right all along in 2015 when she said it was “a ridiculous idea”.
Because as it transpired, she wasn’t “capable” of handling the demanding job of an MP at all. All she’d done in her life up to that point was serve fish and chips. After just a couple of years of gruelling travel and taking the flak that inevitably comes from being in the public eye (nobody can credibly claim to be surprised that politicians get a lot of stick), Black was already burned out.
But something about the (then) £76,000 salary, perks and attention persuaded her to stick at it, despite the toll it was taking on her mental health, the apparent futility of trying to achieve anything in the House Of Commons and her inability to carry out even basic duties like holding constituency surgeries.
And sure enough, almost immediately after being re-elected she took several months off work sick from the stress.
Which might have come as a bit of a let-down to the people who’d voted for her, after she’d told Positive News a month into that second term that “I’ll be happy if, in five years’ time, I can say, ‘The place I am representing has been better represented than it ever was before.’”
But after not representing them at all for a substantial chunk of the next two years, remarkably she still hadn’t learned that – to quote the title of her 2025 stand-up show – “Politics Isn’t For Me”, and remarkably stood once again in the 2019 election.
Successfully returned a third time, she threw herself not into arduous and thankless constituency work but into the internal wars of the SNP, complaining that the party was over-centralised and that there were “four people in a room deciding everything” and handing down policy to be unquestioningly adopted without consultation with its own MPs, let alone the wider membership or – God forbid – the general public.
And yet oddly, when it came to the most polarising, divisive and under-debated subject of all – gender reform, which was NEVER agreed or even meaningfully discussed by SNP conference – Black wholeheartedly went along with the leadership’s diktat and in today’s National piece accuses anyone who questioned the policy of being an ignorant, uninformed bigot.
Readers might be forgiven for wondering what happened to the principled young woman who just a couple of paragraphs earlier was advocating “bringing in different viewpoints”. But we know this isn’t a sudden Damascene conversion, because she’s been consistent – it was infamously Black who in 2019 smirkingly called gender-critical feminists a bunch of “Jeremy Hunts”.
Black makes no argument whatsoever in favour of gender reform on its own merits, just rages like a loyal apparatchik at those who refused to blindly obey “party policy”, and demands that they should be “disciplined”. But then that’s not very shocking, because there’s no such argument to be made.
That’s a shame, because out of curiosity we’d quite like to know what the “thorough research, professional opinion [and] lived experience” Black cites in support of the GRR and the SNP’s support for self-ID was, and we’re certainly not aware of the Scottish Government commissioning any scientific research into the subject.
Indeed, there is no research proving human beings can change sex, because human beings cannot do so, and the Cass Review found conclusively that there’s no reliable evidence whatsoever that so-called “gender-affirming care” has any benefits, let alone ones outweighing the serious mental and physical harm it can cause. And even as the rest of the world slowly starts to wake up to that fact, Black is still brimming with unrestrained, condescending hatred for the “bigots” telling the truth.
But then we get to the part of the interview that really got our teeth grinding.
Having previously moaned about the impossibility of achieving anything worthwhile at Westminster, Black suddenly pivots and says it’s the only road to independence. Now, Wings would be the first to admit that we’re in a pretty nihilist sort of place regarding the indy movement right now, but that’s a level of hopeless defeatist capitulation beyond even our darkest hours.
The SNP secured the first indyref entirely via Holyrood. It had just six MPs looking out over the Thames when the Edinburgh Agreement was signed. And every UK party at Westminster now is implacably opposed to granting a second vote, because they were terrified at the closeness of the first one.
(In any event the current government has a majority of 174 for the next four years, against which the SNP’s nine MPs are unsurprisingly utterly impotent, but we already know from 2017-19 that the party is toothless even in the vanishingly rare times when it has arithmetical leverage.)
Most of the SNP politicians who achieved that referendum had spent decades of their lives fighting for it, often against seemingly hopeless odds, enduring unending mockery and abuse. Black has run away squealing “it’s just too hard!” before she’s even 30, but then has the temerity to assert that the main vehicle for the SNP’s spectacular success of the last 20 years is actually just a waste of everyone’s time.
Still an SNP member, she’s fired a cannonball into the leaky, rusting wreck that is the party’s entire ostensible current excuse for an independence strategy (“secure a pro-indy majority at Holyrood, something something mumble something, independence!”), but has no constructive suggestions for what to replace it with, other than to keep sending MPs to a place where nothing can be achieved.
Oh, and to keep screaming abuse at anyone whose views are in line with the public’s, a cunning strategy which has seen the SNP shed 70,000 members, 40% of its support and 75% of its trust in the last five years.
(Ironically and hilariously, Black told a BBC podcast this week that if the SNP switched to Kate Forbes’ more socially-conservative policies it might risk a “mass exodus”. It adopted gender self-ID in 2021 when it had 125,000 members. It now has 58,000. Presumably she thinks that’s just a minor adjustment and/or unfortunate coincidence.)
As the interview limps towards an underwhelming close, Black’s witless, infantile lack of political acumen is strikingly exposed.
We suppose it’s nice that she at least recognises the existence of “reality” in SOME contexts. But wait, what? We have to wait for the very concept of referendums to be outlawed before we can seek any sort of alternative route? And her solution is to just wait until whoever is in power in London either does that or spontaneously changes their minds about granting one? (Neither of which things will ever happen.)
We suppose that if we’d trousered the best part of a million quid when we were still in our 20s we’d feel pretty relaxed about the future too. But not everyone has the luxury of so casually having a break on the journey back to Scotland’s nationhood.
We’ve been too despairing about the state of the indy movement to get angry about very much of late, readers, but this feckless child’s cretinous proclamations would rile a saint. Politics certainly isn’t for her, and it really would be a great service to the world if she’d take her own advice and shut her mouth about the subject once and for all.
You’ve forgotten…
To quote Nick Berry’s 80s single – ‘Every Loser Wins’. The life of a career politician.
Perhaps we should design a game of Top Trumps (pardon the pun) of career MPs/MSPs..
I just listened to her 15 minutes interview on Radio 4’s woman’s hour. She didn’t mention independence once. Asked what she had wanted to achieve in parliament she said that after “the referendum” she wanted to find ways to “change” things. She couldn’t event bring herself to say the word independence – which is why people actually sent her to Westminster in 2015. What a betrayal of the hopes all those in the Yes campaign who sent people to Westminster to settle up and win independence. Pure narcissism on display.
I heard the R4 interview too. She struck me as someone who was too young and inexperienced, and who found herself quite out of her depth in Westminster. Bit of a shame really, as had she given herself 10 years or so to mature, then she might have had something useful to contribute.
What is it with people who get really good degrees and appear to be intelligent, but come out with the greatest pile of horse manure? Being young and a bit gallus is to be expected and forgivable, but people with ADHD and autism are far from being stupid, if a bit literal. I’m afraid the drag queen episode did it for me. Nobody, but nobody, thinks bringing a drag queen into school is in any way admirable or sensible – not unless they’re tuppence short of a ten pence bit, or they have a sexual fetish.
Dae ye want saltt n vingegur wi that?
I went through the same process, Rev. Initially I thought she was very impressive and could be a useful draw for young voters whilst other MPs could do the real work but she is less intelligent/analytical/driven than I thought. We are better off without her.
I thought she was great too – we’ve been scammed.
“all your friends and your foes
would rather die
than have to touch you”
Is Mhairi Black trying to get signed off on a disability allowance after she leaves politics?
She claims she is ADHD. And also autism – autism is very rare in women, so much so that for every 100 who would claim it, 99 are just lying. But it is so rare, so it makes you special.
She is also depressed. On what, 90K a year? – buys a lot of prozac, especially as we still have free prescriptions up here.
But she got a uni degree and had a decent career in politics, she made a splash, then just turned into SNP fodder.
Denounced “SNP careerists … ”
Pot, meet kettle.
– truly disappointed.
I like when people get the references
I read this comment and I thought to myself ‘that sounds about right’. So I went to PubMed and did a little searching and I found a paper with the title ‘Autism is very rare in women, so much so that for every 100 who would claim it, 99 are just lying’ by a Dr Urik Hunt from the University of Strathcathro Services.
Always nice to see an educated cultured comment BTL.
“Depression” is just anger, without enthusiasm.
I believe “adult ADHD” is just laziness crossed with being spoilt.
The sheer hell of the combination of Mhairi Black the interviewee and Richard Walker the interviewer.
I think the only thing more depressing than that car crash interview of the imbecile Black are the comments praising her on the National page.
I think her gained an reputation for being a bright young thing and great hope because of her (excellent) maiden speech. Course it took a few years before we found out it had actually been written by Jim Sillars and she merely repeated it. Would have been better electing Jim! I don’t agree with everything he says but by God at least he has some acumen and ability!
All true.
Is that true? Source?
Lloyd Quinan has said on TASP that the maiden speech was written by someone else – he named the person and I think he said it was Jim.
Yes it was Lloyd Quinan who said it on TASP. Definitely said Jim Sillars. Since he’s already said it on record, I’m sure he’d be happy to confirm. Of course I suppose he could be wrong, but having listened to her speak since then, it’s not exactly hard to believe and she did travel on the Margo bus during the independence campaign.
It was said at the time and common knowledge.
There will be archive somewhere. Or ask Jim.
”it had actually been written by Jim Sillars and she merely repeated it. ”
===========
Th
“it had actually been written by Jim Sillars and she merely repeated it. ”
======
I didn’t know that! It makes me reappraise not only a (brilliant) speech but her whole career.
She certainly is a good communicator, but like Sturgeon and Blair is totally lacking in authenticity without, like either of them, having achieved anything. I am pleased she is out of politics. For one thing she has not nearly as bright as she think she is.
Mhairi Black: SNP MP. Has mental “issues.”
Wants “Socialism.”
A Prime Example of why the SNP is so comfortable power sharing with the Greens and with Wokeness.
On the Left, it’s always (as the French would say) “Pas d’ennemis a gauche” (“No enemies to the Left”).
What has disgusted me beyond words is her stupid comment that independence will not be obtained through Holyrood, but rather through Westminster, which is where power is centred.
Well then, WTF have been the SNP MPs, including her, doing for the best part of 10 years at Westminster, then? Wasting our fcking time? Taking us for fools? Ironing their arses in the green seats? What was she doing down there for three terms? Did she do anything at all to deliver independence? Or did she just sit back and pocket the salary money while up here in Scotland people put their hopes in them delivering independence?
Scotland is energy self-sufficient. Yet, children go hungry to schools because of this toxic union. And this monumental idiot has the brass neck to come up and, after pocketing a salary for a decade after being sent to Westminster to deliver independence, rubbing salt in our wounds saying that Holyrood is useless.
I do not know how this individual can say such a thing with a straight face and without melting in embarrassment, to be honest. I do not know how any of the SNP MPs and ex SNP MPs can look at the people of Scotland in the eye without feeling remorse for their staggering incompetence, which it is starting to look deliberate. I am now thinking these bunch of betraying idiots are simply taking the micky of the yes voters just because they think they can and because they are clearly taking orders from some deep state creature.
Useless charlatans, the lot of them. Hell mend them. I read the stupid comments of this woman and I feel sick.
Makes you wonder just how many of the SNP are gonna end up on the comedy circuit? A joke party full of joke politicians, led by the Motorhome Queen, who herself is appearing in the Glasgow Comedy Festival on the 22nd March at the King’s Theatre. The gall of these people is quite the spectacle, and their masters in London must be the only ones truly laughing.
The paper that fights for Independence, AYE right I bet its never won any awards.
I don’t read it and would never waste my money buying it, I’m not that stupid.
The SNP MPs/MSPs are surely all a bunch of comedians. They certainly appear to have no idea that nationalist majorities are elected to liberate a colonized people.
link to grousebeater.wordpress.com
Her maiden speech was the best I had ever encountered.
I heard a thunder that was going to shake Westminster.
In effect it was a fart with a follow through that left a nasty stain.
It wasn’t written by her it was written bi Jim Sillars.
Kelso and Peebles? What’s wrong with Hawick and Galashiels or better still Burnfoot and Langlee?
I suppose Melrose must have put the foot down…we’ll raise the drawbridge early if that ruffian comes within a mile…
That last photograph would make a good advert for Bonjella.
White kit kat-who knew
Whats the National subscription numbers?
You mean what are both of them called?
Wasn’t she a SLAB blow-in to the (then) winning party?
Personally I wouldn’t leave loose change lying around near her.
What exactly is it with politicians who delude themselves into believing that they can do comedy?
I am truly amazed that she/it/they was/were able to read from her /they/its tablet
If you’re in the mood to get angry or just want to keep yer wrath warm, have a swatch at the first few minutes of this…
Sturgeon piling plaudits on Alex Salmond.
link to youtube.com
By all means get angry at Mhairi Black.
But she’s a symptom, not the cause.
Until such time as you get really angry with the tribalist dunderheids who voted for her not once (at 20 YO FFS), not twice, but three times, Independence is going nowhere.
If I was Black, I’d be saying, “sure, I took the piss and had a laugh, but you gormless voters started it and you just kept going along with it”.
So, seriously, what was she going to do? Grifters grift, but their enablers are what allows them to keep going.
I really wouldn’t want to live in an independent scotland run by the likes of Mhairi Black
As I don’t fancy a ultra left wing marxist hellhole
However
due to the “kind and caring” nature of the likes of Manky
As a conservative leaning libertarian
I don’t think I’d be living for very long
Another stushie is brewing over whether or not Swinney was keen to get the SNP on-board with Blair’s invasion of Iraq.
Okay, it was all away back in pre-history, well, not really, just 20 years ago.
But some ‘names’ are saying that Alex Salmond talked him out of it at the last-minute i.e. before he took to the stage after Tommy Sheridan at the huge ‘Not In Our Name’ gathering at the SECC back in 2005.
Others insist that they were ‘there’ when this did or didn’t happen.
Who to believe?
Is it possible that a journalist (preferably a Scottish one, or is that being racist?) could raise this with Swinney?
“I get on quite well with a lot of the Labour old guard and quite a few Tories actually,” she said. “There is my boyfriend – Jacob Rees-Mogg. He’s my favourite. It’s the kind of place where, if you are reasonable with folk then they will soften a little.”
link to theguardian.com
Care to explain why you have an issue with Manky speaking to others outside of her party?
I’d say her statement you have quoted as the only highlight of her career
If you would prefer SNP mps to only scream obscenities at other parties then it says a lot about yourself
None of it good
This transgender nonsense has destroyed so many people,
rotted their brains,
in what weird and sick world would you support a dirty old drag act, called flowjob, to talk to primary school children.
`Renfrewshire MP Mhairi Black has defended a decision to invite a drag queen into a primary school to read to pupils, despite an outcry from parents over sexually-explicit social media posts`
The whole drag time story time confuses the fuck out of me
WTF are they trying to achieve?
If you want to challenge gender norms then why not invite in a female mechanic, engineer, fireman, truck driver etc
If you want to teach kids that trans people are normal then why the fuck would you invite in a drag act who are a human cartoon.
if you want to teach kids that trans women are all creepy weirdos then I can’t think of a better person to invite in then Flowjob
From The National
‘More MSPs are set to stand down at next year’s election than at any previous Holyrood vote.
So far, 21 parliamentarians have signalled their intention to pack up their offices and move on to something else. That number is only going to increase as deadlines for candidate selections approach.’
Comment –
‘I expect a lot of the Westminister MPs who lost their seats will want in. I think that would be good for the SNP.’
Maybe from a plant, but a fair enough example of what far too many do actually believe. Spin doctors must have one of the easiest jobs in the world.
THERE OUGHT TO BE a «shelf life» for guys in politics, a couple of years maybe.
if no significant impression in made in that time no loss to the nation.
possibly a system of rolling partial elections too.
keep the demos in charge of the system.
I reckon that’s nonsense.
There’s no difficult and complex area of human endeavour where a newbie, even a trained and qualified one, waltzes in and achieves great successes from Day 1.
You’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that politics is easy. It’s that trap that leads to the likes of Black being elected.
You’ve completely failed to join the dots and conclude that if virtually every political career ends in failure, that’s because it’s a bloody difficult career to achieve anything in.
Much easier to spout the usual unthinking playground drivel about subversion or kompromat than accept the job is challenging.
I have always considered the depiction of Scotland as the blushing bride, trapped and robbed inside an abusive marriage, was particulary apt. It is one of these perfect metaphors where the more you think about it, the better it fits, on multiple levels.
So where does the nu-SNP fit in this narrative?
For me, it’s the fake friend, the false confidente and shoulder to cry on, who clyped and sabotaged the plan, and told Lady Scotland’s abusive husband of her plans to escape and leave. Now it will be harder then ever.
Some friend. Turns out the nu-SNP was shagging the fat drunken redcoat all along.
Poor Lady Scotland. Courage undone by betrayal from those closest to her. Break another little piece of my heart again…
Stay strong lass. We will get you out of this.
Signed, with love, : Your People.
Too many were caught up in the euphoria of the almost clean sweep of 2015 to stop and think about the absurdity of a 20 year old Politics student running for office. Which makes it all the more surprising that so many are surprised she turned out to be little more than a potty mouthed NED who got lucky, at the public’s great expense.
Enough of MB.
Just waiting for the Yoon Mysterons here to mention the Scottish ferry fiasco (which indeed it very well is).
So with a view to exploring a wee side route doon the rabbit hole of great ol’ world beating British procurement fiascos thought I would do a quick check on the ongoing Ajax fiasco.
An armoured personnel carrier with a gun, ten a penny during the Cold War.
Apparently 44 (yes only 44) have been cleared for trials (so is effectively ongoing).
Whoopy doo! Back slapping all round eh?
Except..
Just EIGHT years late and a budget that’s disappeared into space at (last estimate) an eye watering £4bn!
Just to be clear, that’s four thousand million pounds, so hardly a bargain at nearly £91m a piece and target practice death trap fodder to a cheap kamikaze drone costing mere hundreds.
The ferry fiasco for 2 medium sized ferries is currently at £450m or so; enough to buy almost 5 Ajax armoured personnel carriers (with a gun), each designed to carry crew and only a handful of passengers; bizarrely the whole point of an armoured personnel carrier.
It’ll be interesting to watch the Dreadnought missile sub development fiasco in the making and see how much of UK increased defence spending funded by hitting the poor sinks down that big black predictable hole in the making..
There’s around 600 of these on order and they’re a bit more than an APC. The unit cost is about £7B. Defence procurement has never been the UKG’s strong point and why did they choose General Dynamics?
Thanks for the info.
I know they are supposed to be cvrt/ warrior replacements.
Last I heard they had planned for about 1100 of them all in.
Curiouser and curiouser that they suddenly don’t need almost half as many. A bit dare I say it like if ScotGov had binned the second ferry?!
Yes yes yes there would have been cancellation costs, wonder if that’s why the costs as you say for substantially fewer Ajax has almost reached double of the already astronomical over run cost for good ol’ world beating rule Britannia?
Who’d have thought we/ good ol’ Britain couldn’t even mange to replace armoured personnel carriers, scorpions scimitars and their cheap Ali derivatives.
As I said, watch Dreadnought for future former failed procurement fiasco status money pits..
Congratulations
you’re the first Scottish nationalist to acknowledge the ferries are a mess
We as a nation should be able todo much better
And step 1 is acknowledging it’s a mess
As to the Westminster procurement
I prefer the London garden bridge project
18 million spent
number of bricks laid = ZERO
Aye, Old Lochinvar, Sah! Seeing as how you brought it up …
Word I hear is that no vehicle can survive on the Eastern European battlefield, however thickly armoured it might be. The whole lot needs to be scrapped, unless some effective counter for massed, cheap, kamikaze drones can be found.
As it happens, the world experts in cheap, kamikaze drones are the people who have been fighting desperately for their survival these past 3 years. The usual result of rapid technological development in the white-hot crucible of all-out war, as the historians might put it.
The Donald seems to intend that this hard-won expertise should be trashed, and/or handed on a plate to the Orcs, and hence to their “real” allies, the Covid Spreaders and their hermit proxies. An odd way to go about MAGA IMHO.
But what do I know, not being orange?
As you were, Old Lochinvar, Sah!
HATEY MCHATEFACE.
some form of wisdom ought to come with experience. for so many «politicians» it never seems to arrive. does not prevent the species from assuming they have something to offer humanity though, i believe this is a classic sociopathic trait.
my childhood, in Iraq, was well screwed by the pious antics of a collection of them.
we shall have to beg to differ on this matter of public servants and their merits.
have a good evening!
Note. Black hated the functional conformism of the HoC.
Thst gurning wee psycho has a fucking cheek. She achieved the square root of hee haw when she was sliming about Westminster. She was barely there anyway – the laziest MSP in Westminster – and milked alternately bullying others and playing at being working class. I think she became a politician for exactly three reasons, the same three Sturgeon did:
1) To get a lot of money and retire early (though Sturgeon is obviously older).
2) To greet and girn about sexual minority rights, and get revenge on hetero Scotland for its historical homophobia.
3) To set herself up for a career in entertainment after being in politics. Her and her psycho ex-FM pal now bumming about, laughing about being in politics and how horrible it is, is one of the sickest jokes ever played on this tragic, ruined wee country.
We trusted folk like these wee grudge-carrying nutcases! They sold us down the river politically, achieving literally fuck all in their time in power except the destruction of the SNP, and the healthy filling of their pension pots. Now they want us to pay to see them at comedy festivals laughing at how horrible politics is, and what a terrible time they had whilst doing their arseholy dilettante dabbling in it!
Fuck them both, and fuck every other SNP piece of shit retiring next year. They see the damage is done, the party is dead, and there’s no more fun to be had at the taxpayer’s expense. They have killed Scotland, and they can eat shit and fucking die as far as I am concerned. All of them.
Another lightweight with various identity politics lifebuoys (Lesbian/ADHD/Autism und so weiter) to keep her afloat and dissuade you from having a go at her for being a useless wee sell-out and chancer, which wouldn’t be “kind”, innit?
She has sunk so low she is now the go-to prole-Jock on Woko-Haram Women’s Hour to reinforce English stereotypes of northern tenement-dwelling wee hairies and allow the condescending bourgeoisie ablaw the dyke to sleep more soundly in their beds.
And a welcome Embra Fringe money-making addition to form the Sturge-McDermid-Black struggling-to-be-middlebrow half-back line, motto “We “heart” books” as long as the words aren’t too big.
Hear hear TC.
Very well put, TC.
What a pointless individual she is.
Hey Rev, dinnae post ony mair pics like yon wot gie mae the boak when I stagger hame near midnight.
If only the fckwits voting for these arsewipes would read your truthful assessment of their real character and real motives
Beware Mhairi Black.
The last Independence politician to get the star treatment from the British media was Sturgeon. They could have destroyed her any time in the last 10 years – for corruption, sex shenanigans, lying to Hollyrood, lying to the courts, … – but they protected her while she destroyed Independence.
Mhairi Black is Plan B if Independence has a resurgence.