The SNP MP Mhairi Black is just 20 years old, and she made a point of this in her maiden speech to Parliament, mentioning her predecessor, the then-shadow Cabinet member Douglas Alexander. The joke? ‘He served the constituency for many years, after all I was only three when he was elected.’
She then spoke about Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns, the famed Scottish poet, and how her constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire was home to none other than William Wallace (you know, Mel Gibson played him in the film).
She then blasted the political landscape we’re living in right now. And even if you’re not Scottish, it all hits home that much further because here is a young woman, around our age (the average MP’s age in 2010 was 50, the 2015 average is apparently ‘still being confirmed’???), actually speaking up about what she knows (she's lived in her constituency all her life.)
And these are the best things she said:
1. Things aren’t as majestic as you’d think:
‘Within my constituency, it’s not all fantastic…our unemployment level is higher than that of the UK average, one in five children in my constituency go to bed hungry at night, Paisley Job Centre has the third highest number of sanctions in the whole of Scotland’
2. Benefit sanctions are ridiculously strict and harming people
A poor and vulnerable man she once spoke to at a food bank went hungry for five days so he could afford to get the bus to the Job Centre. On the way, ‘He fainted due to exhaustion and dehydration. He was 15 minutes late to the Job Centre and was sanctioned for 13 weeks.’ Mhairi condemned this ‘When the Chancellor spoke in his budget about fixing the roof while the it’s shining, I have to ask, on who is the sun shining?’
3. Food banks shouldn’t be a thing
She responded to the fact the Jobs minister Priti Patel said: ‘food banks play an important role in local welfare provision’ with the simple: ‘Food banks are not part of the welfare state, they are a symbol that the welfare state is failing’
4. She’s the only 20-year-old George Osborne wants to help house
In the middle of a housing crisis, ‘The Chancellor also abolished any housing benefit for anyone below the age of 21’, Mhairi explained: ‘So we’re now in the ridiculous situation whereby, because I am an MP, not only am I the youngest, but I am also the only 20-year-old in the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing.’ She also expressed disbelief that she’s given taxpayers’ money a place to live in London as an MP but couples earning more than £40,000 between them aren’t.
5. There needs to be a strong opposition to the Conservatives
‘I feel it is the Labour party that left me, not the other way about…we triumphed on a wave of hope, hope that there was something different, something better.’
She called out Harriet Harman’s request for Labour to abstain from votes about the budget changes to tax credits, (if that doesn't make sense; the Tories want to remove certain benefits from poorer people and the Labour party kind of agree with it) before referencing Tony Benn when he said that politicians need to stay ‘true and strong and principled’ and point people in the right direction instead of swaying with whatever the general political mood is.
6. Labour and the SNP need to join sides in the fight against the Conservatives
‘It is together with all the parties on these benches that we must form an opposition.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.