BLACK SAYS PARTY MUST CHANGE
MP speaks out over lack of support when she was elected and urges Sturgeon to do more in future
MHAIRI Black has hit out at the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond in a dramatically frank interview.
The 23-year-old MP, presented as a nationalist firebrand by the SNP, said she has had little support from the party since being elected two years ago.
She told how Salmond patronised her with style tips and offered to have former MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh take her on a girls’ shopping trip.
“He then said the last time he’d had this conversation it was with a young woman called Nicola Sturgeon,” Black told Holyrood magazine.
“I thought, ‘Oh, very good’, and I just left the awkward silence hanging when he asked me if I wanted him to arrange it with Taz. I’m like, ‘I am never going to be told how to dress, especially by a man.’”
The Daily Record columnist was promoted as one of the next generation of SNP leaders when she was elected as a 20-year-old student in 2015.
But Black has found it hard to settle at Westminster. She has expressed her dislike for the atmosphere of the Commons, and questioned whether she would stand again. Yet she stood and was re-elected in 2017. Black said she has had little contact with Sturgeon, after being elected to Westminster as the youngest MP in 300 years.
Black said: “The only time I really sort of had a conversation with her was when she asked me to do the youth stuff during the Scottish elections, but other than that, no. I mean, we’ve been at public things and meet and greets but nothing special.”
Black said Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, was assigned to offer mentoring in 2015 but they met only twice. She said: “I think I frightened her.” She added: “I think things should change and that it might be an idea for Nicola to take the time to talk to folk or whatever but I hope someone else further down the line does have a different experience to me. “I don’t want to make out I was really needy or anything but I think that’s an area where the party does need a kick up the backside, especially given the kind of caring ethos we like to preach in the party.”