The young face of the SNP earthquake

If there is one face to remember from Britain’s general election on Thursday, it may well be that of Mhairi Black, a 20-year-old politics student from Glasgow and candidate for the Scottish National Party.

Black would be the youngest member of parliament since 1667 and the embodiment of expected sweeping victories for nationalists in Scotland at the expense of the centre-left Labour Party.

To take her place as the representative for Paisley and Renfrewshire South near Glasgow, she would have to topple one of Labour’s big guns, 47-yearold Douglas Alexander, their foreign affairs spokesman and campaign chief.

A blonde with an easy smile and a no-nonsense style who pronounces her first name “Mary”, Black grew up in a Labour household but has turned her back on a party she says has become too distant from its supporters and left-wing roots.

She says her hometown has been in decline all through her life, with one in five people in Paisley now living in poverty and one in three families forced to resort to food banks for help.

Black campaigned for Scottish independence in a referendum last year that was won by the “No” vote.

Undeterred, she said in an interview two weeks later: “It doesn’t mean the dream has died.”

“The vote result was absolutely heartbreaking, gutwrenching. But less than a week later I was raring to go. Everyone is pumped up, saying what’s next?” she said at the time. Her bid for parliament came soon after that.

“I’m coming across door after door of people who are tired of having an MP who’s never here,” Black told the news website BuzzFeed in an interview.