A 20-year-old student has booted out Labour heavyweight Douglas Alexander in one of the biggest surprises of the recently held UK elections.
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.
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 job after graduation – Member of Parliament.
Ms Black is yet to take her final Glasgow University exam, on Scottish politics.
The young politics and public policy student defeated a formidable opponent, Douglas Alexander, shadow Foreign Secretary, Labour Party election campaign co-ordinator, and MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
The seat was once solid Labour territory.
In the run up,as polls shifted in her favour,Ms Black spoke excitedly of “a seismic shift” in Scottish politics. Mr Alexander, rather less enthusiastically, told press of being “confident, not complacent”, while admitting that some polls had produced “a challenge”.
When asked of her chances before the election result announcements Ms Black replied
” I am adopting the same attitude as I do with my exams: do your best and see what you get”.
