The pony-tailed bon viveur in a £140,000 car and tweed suits
THE corridors and bars of the Palace of Westminster are no stranger to the colourful and the charismatic. It is a life that attracts not only the power-hungry and careerist but also the flamboyant and the bon viveurs, holding court in one of the Commons’ many lively watering-holes.
The latter category is home to pony-tailed Chris Law, an imposing 6ft 6in figure who has become a well-known fixture of the social scene in Westminster since his election in May last year.
He was one of the boisterous new contingent of Nationalists who, on their first day in the Commons, seized control of the green benches formerly dominated by Labour.
With some chutzpah, Mr Law immediately laid claim to the berth normally occupied by veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner, who had sat in the same spot for three decades.
But that controversy, setting the tone for the SNP’s noisy, often juvenile conduct in the Chamber, is of a different order to the one that may now threaten Mr Law’s brief political career: a police investigation over his financial dealings.
It is ironic that Mr Law, 46, should find himself mired in such a probe given his background as a ‘finance adviser’.
In fact, he runs a company called The Mortgage Doctors, the trading name of CMAL, which boasts on its website it understands that ‘everyone has different needs and is in a different financial situation’.
When reporters visited his home in Dundee this week, there was a brass plate next to the doorbell which said ‘Law’ and ‘mortgage services’, which was later removed.
The company had net assets of about £105,000 according to accounts filed in January last year.
It is with admirable dexterity that Mr Law appears to manage this dual lifestyle, providing mortgage advice while representing his constituents in Dundee West, where he replaced Labour’s Jim McGovern.
SNP chiefs last year made every MP promise to make a ‘full-time commitment’ to the job – a rule that has been widely flouted. In his maiden speech in the Commons, Mr Law compared himself to Keir Hardie, the first Labour MP.
‘It has come to my attention that since my election it is apparent that I have attracted some media headlines for my striking and handsome appearance, notably my pony-tail,’ he told fellow MPs.
‘I come in a good tradition of Scottish nationals critiqued for such matters. The last man to solicit such a level of attention was Keir Hardie, another progressive member of this House who attracted negative comments about his working man’s garb – in his case, a deerstalker of all things.’
He promised to be ‘Dundee’s man in Westminster, not Westminster’s man in Dundee’.
On Facebook, he describes himself as ‘Himalayan motorcycle expedition organiser, occasional social documentary filmmaker,
writer, financial adviser, trained French chef and social behavioural analyst, consistently aiming to inform, educate and illuminate the debate both with myself and others about what it means to have a good and fair society and how to achieve it’. And with his mix of eccentricity and business hinterland, he was exactly the sort of candidate Nicola Sturgeon wanted to see.
Back in the heady days of May 2015, she was ‘bursting with pride’ for her Commons new starts.
Perpetually clad in tweed, Mr Law has also been compared to John Brown, Queen Victoria’s favourite ghillie, the epitome of the rugged Highlander, portrayed by Billy Connolly in the film Mrs Brown.
Another political commentator opined that if Jeremy Clarkson were a Scottish Nationalist, he would be Chris Law.
The MP drives an Aston Martin DB9 Coupe emblazoned with the Union flag. The price for a brand new DB9 starts at £140,000.
Unlike some of his Braveheart colleagues, it seems Mr Law has no hang-ups about flags.
For ten years, he ran a business offering tours of the Himalayas atop 1950s motorcycles. Back in Scotland, he spent the summer of 2014 driving throughout the country in a refurbished 1930s Green Goddess fire engine, in what he called his Spirit of Independence tour.
It is this initiative that is now at the centre of the Police Scotland investigation.
Mr Law took his eight-miles-tothe-gallon wheels – decked in blue with ‘Vote Yes’ in Celtic lettering – to the Highlands, islands and the peace camp at Faslane, the Trident submarine base.
The MP, who lives with partner Kirsty Doig, 43, and owns property in Dundee and Aberdeen, was featured in newspapers worldwide leaning against the engine in a tweed waistcoat.
Explaining the rationale for the Spirit of Independence tour, Mr Law said in an interview last year: ‘One of the issues that came up on the doorstep was people feeling they no longer trusted the archetypal Westminster politician.
‘There was not a lot of information about the political process, so I set up the Spirit of Independence national campaign.’
After winning his seat in Dundee – dubbed the City of Yes – he boasted that he had ‘placed Labour in Dundee into retirement’.
In the Commons, he also put his financial acumen to good use, using his expenses to charge the taxpayer nearly £600 to park his car at Edinburgh Airport – and claiming £4,036 for Ikea office furniture.
While fighting for the rights of ‘low-income workers’ in Dundee – one of his greatest passions – he also found time for a sojourn to the Maldives as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Flights and accommodation for the six-day visit in July amounted to £4,634.68.
The group met opposition and government MPs of all parties, ‘political prisoners and members of the judiciary’, according to the Register of Members’ Interests.
MR Law has railed against the increasing use of food banks in Dundee, saying: ‘It’s something people can no longer tolerate and something I will be campaigning against.’ But he has also taken to London cuisine with some enthusiasm and claims to be regularly mistaken for Swedish professional footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović in restaurants in the city.
In an interview last year, Mr Law said he had encountered ‘scepticism’ about politics but hoped his common touch would reassure people of his motivation.
‘I’m six-and-a-half feet tall with long hair,’ he said. ‘I do not own a suit and may never have one.
‘I want people to engage in politics at a level that they want to engage at. For far too long politics has felt detached, removed or being done for someone else.’
There was indeed a sense that politics could change for good when the new batch of Nationalist MPs moved into the Commons last year (dubbing their office block Jockalypse House).
But perhaps some within the party predicted the traumas that would lie ahead; scandals that would see two of Mr Law’s colleagues quitting the SNP whip in other controversies over financial dealings: Glasgow East MP Natalie McGarry, now facing five separate fraud charges, and Edinburgh West MP Michelle Thomson, whose mortgage deals are under police investigation.
Some SNP insiders believed the new group would test the party’s whips as never before.
Following the General Election, one said: ‘There are people going to Westminster who aren’t the sort to be bound by three-line whips.
‘I think three or four could even resign the whip if they feel there’s insufficient focus on achieving independence, which would be a blow for us. So winning’s not going to be without its challenges.’
In retrospect, such a prescient assessment seems something of an understatement.