A 20-year-old SNP student has booted out Labour
heavyweight Douglas Alexander in one of the biggest coups by the Scottish
nationalists.
Mhairi Black overturned the shadow foreign secretary’s
huge 16,000 majority to win by a comfortable margin of 5,684 votes in the
Paisley and Renfrewshire South seat. She is set to be the youngest MP in
Parliament and the youngest since the 19th century.
In an interview with her first published on 24th
April 2015, Mhairi Black with a smile, a chuckle and a little bit of youthful
earnestness, the SNP candidate for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, sought to
persuade the wavering voter.
“This is a real chance,” she said. “Things like this
don’t come along very often.” That is
true Ms. Black. They certainly do not.
If elected, the
20-year-old will become the youngest MP since 1667, when Christopher Monck,
aged 13 and a half, became knight of the Shire for Devon. She will go to London
to be enrolled in her first graduate job – member of Parliament – and a couple
of weeks later return to take her final Glasgow University exam, on Scottish
politics.