Blair McDougall: Enjoying the argument isn't the point - it's about getting things done

As a self-confessed “solitary child”, Blair McDougall would regularly walk on his own up the banks of Auldhouse Burn from his family’s flat on Main Street, Thornliebank up to Rouken Glen Park.

Deep in thought and usually accompanied by his wee black lab, Bonnie, he would pass the dams that once served the now long-gone mills that tell the story of the area’s rich industrial past and also its decline. A story of people’s lives and how work, and lack of it, caused hardship, forced house moves and made for family splits. 

And while as a small child McDougall may not have always understood the significance that rivers, if you will excuse the pun, have had running through his own life story, it was to rivers that he turned to in his maiden speech in the House of Commons as the new Labour MP for East Renfrewshire.

A clearly emotional McDougall talked about the River Thames running past where he was now standing as a newly elected MP in Westminster. He said that it reminded him of his roots, that while he was born and bred in East Renfrewshire, his grandfather had been born just across the river from the House of Commons in Lambeth. How, as one of seven children born into poverty and with the death of their parents, he and his siblings were then scattered across London in different orphanages and foster homes.

McDougall recalled tearfully how his grandfather had gone to his own grave believing that his mother had died of consumption and that his father had then succumbed to old wounds suffered during the Great War and died.

But that story had been a lie. 

A lie, McDougall said, told to protect a small boy (his grandfather) from a “horrible truth”. A truth that was only uncovered when a family friend researched McDougall’s ancestry and discovered a family tree rooted in poverty.

“The truth was,” McDougall told his fellow MPs, “that my great grandfather, overwhelmed by grief [of his wife] and overcome by poverty, decided that his children would have a better future without him, that their life would be better if he ended his. So, he walked to Lambeth Pier, and he threw himself into the freezing water that runs past this parliament.”
 And then returning to the topic of his East Renfrewshire constituency, McDougall quoted the once famous Newton Mearns poet, Robert Pollock, who wrote, ‘sorrows remembered, sweeten present joy’. 

“That’s true”, McDougall continued. “Because today, if you stand on that place where my great-grandfather’s story ended, you can look across the river to where his great-grandson just gave his maiden speech as a Member of Parliament, watched from the gallery by his own children.
“And however long I serve on the banks of this river, I will always have an eye on the water flying by, and my mind on the responsibility we have to our children and to our grandchildren.”

It was one of those ‘you could hear a pin drop’ moments in the Chamber as McDougall – a big lad – who was clearly rocked by his own words, made the salient point through his own family’s misfortune, that politicians have a duty to think long term, to think about generational poverty, and what their role should be in making life better for all.

That personal tale of a family’s implosion caused by ineradicable penury would, in itself, have been enough reason to understand McDougall’s motivation in seeing politics as a force for good. But as the two of us sit side-by-side in Rouken Glen looking over the green and muddied waters of the local duck pond on a glorious late summer day, his words prove the proverb, ‘still waters run deep’. As his great-grandfather’s suicide was not the end of the story.

What McDougall left out of his maiden speech was that his grandfather never fully recovered from the trauma of his childhood experiences and the legacy of those wounds seeped into the next generation.

“He [my grandfather] was deeply damaged by the loss of his parents, of being taken into care, of being separated from his siblings, of the grinding poverty, and then on top of that, he was then deeply damaged by the war,” McDougall tells me before hesitating to catch his emotions. “And yes, that had consequences. That manifested itself in his own mental health and he in turn was then horribly abusive to all his own children, including my mother. 

McDougall photographed for Holyrood by Anna Moffat

“My mother had a very difficult life with all of that baggage as well as coping with her own disability. She is blind, was a single mother of two, living on benefits, and we were pretty skint, and in some ways, you just feel the pattern could kind of go on and on until, somehow, you can break it.

“There was a time in my life when I was younger when I was probably quite angry, not comfortable in my own skin, I disengaged socially, wasn’t particularly interested in school pals. I was probably embarrassed by our situation. I was mixing with kids at my school, which had a broad catchment area, who lived in houses that our whole flat would have fitted in their front room, and I was awkward about that sort of stuff, and I had things to work through. But I look back now and think my mum was really quite extraordinary – on her own, no money, two kids, disabled, and she kept the household together, kept us going. I think I get the drive from her.”

“At the same time, McDougall had no relationship with his father after the age of about ten and as a father himself, he now reflects on what that absence meant and as we talk, he even questions whether that desire to be wanted or perhaps more importantly, to understand why you were not, was also a driver for him into politics.

“I guess if we are going full-on therapy session here, Mandy, I have always wondered whether there was that desire to compensate for something missing. You know, like people that go into theatre looking for that adoration or affirmation that they are wanted or at least not hated, because they gather a crowd. I don’t know but I did always wonder about my father and what it was about me, us, that he didn’t want. 

“I was kind of messed up about it as a teenager and throughout high school. I wouldn’t say I was angry, just kind of more puzzled as to why. Why doesn’t he want to be part of our lives? But I grew up and life moved on, and I always thought I had dealt with that part of my life. And throughout my 30s, I was actually quite self-congratulatory about that, you know, well done you, despite it all, you’re very well adjusted. And then when I got to my 40s, I thought about him and thought he could die soon. I wondered how I would feel and if there were a whole load of questions that had never been answered that would bother me.

“And I was actually in Georgia working with the people who were involved in a kind of revolution there and I heard he was dying, and I got a phone call saying he wanted to talk to me. I did think, ‘oh, my God’, is this it, the moment where I am no longer as well adjusted as I thought I was. Anyway, I spoke to him, and he was asking me basic things like how many kids do you have, what’s your wife’s name, like we were the strangers that we were. Father and son by biology but knew nothing about each other. And then he went, ‘Okay, I better go’. And that was it. There was no sort of cathartic moment. And it was just really weird. The 15-year-old me would have been filled with angst about it but it was the best possible outcome because it kind of confirmed to me that it was all fine, that he was just a stranger and I didn’t need any questions answered or gaps filled, because my life had moved on.”

I look at McDougall now. A giant of a man, an educated man, now a member of parliament and one of the UK Government’s so-called mission champions for Scotland, tasked with working across ministerial departments to deliver on a promise of national renewal. A loving husband and the father of two children aged 10 and 12, who he clearly adores. Surely, the very epitome of someone that has managed to break the mould he had earlier described. 

McDougall was a bright working-class lad who went to university and who engaged in politics from a very early age as a passport to making change. Someone who has been in the inner echelons of the Labour Party for nearly three decades. The chair of Scottish Labour students; a special adviser to various ministers in the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments; a political strategist that understands the changing winds of politics, having helped lead the unsuccessful bid for David Miliband to become the leader of the Labour Party then a more successful campaign which saw Jim Murphy elected as Scottish leader, and then a Scottish adviser to Jess Phillips in her unsuccessful bid for party leadership in 2020. He also stood for election himself in 2017 and lost, and then stood again earlier this year and won. He has felt the joy of electoral success and, importantly, he says, the lessons of defeat.

“I have to say, I came off the stage on election night having been announced as the winner and I was talking to my wife, and I said I thought Kirsten Oswald’s speech was very gracious, she got the tone just right given she had just lost the seat, and my wife basically said to me that it was good I was listening because I will have to give that speech one day. Ha, I thought, thanks a lot, let me enjoy the moment, won’t you! But seriously, you learn a lot more from your defeats, or certainly you should learn a lot more from your defeats than you do from your successes.

“I think there’s also an advantage with being a loser which is you only ever inhabited the world of possibility, not the world of failure and let down. David [Miliband] being an example of that, you know, if you’re never confronted with the consequences of the choices you made, then you can always live in the world of the hopeful possibility rather than the reality. You live in the world of poetry rather than prose. 

“I think I’m lucky in the sense that I’ve got close to experienced friends in politics, and I’ve learnt a lot. I was talking to the students at a freshers’ event last night, and they asked me for advice, and I said to them your voice is as valid as anyone else’s, but I said never be too arrogant to ask for help and advice. The example I gave was that there was an urgent question in parliament and while I had spoken about five times already in there, I didn’t know what the rules for that were. I thought I could spend all morning worrying about this or I could just phone someone who knows. And so, I think the humility to ask questions when you don’t know is important and I think people tend to be much better at that as they get older because you’re more comfortable in yourself.

“I think having the confidence to admit you don’t know everything is important. I think surrounding yourself with people who will tell you when your shit stinks is really vital and I’ve also been really lucky in having both experienced, older heads around me and younger staff who have no degree of deference towards me whatsoever. I think that’s really important. 

“The other thing, which comes partly from experience in this country, but also from the 10 years of work I have been doing all around the world working with democratic campaigners, is understanding that one of the biggest divides in politics in Britain and around the world now is between performance and persuasion. So, there are people who want to look good and feel good, and there are people who want to get things done, and social media algorithms push you into that.

“The type of politics we’ve had in Scotland pushes you into that, where you either say things which are performative for your own side, or you fight with the people you know are never going to agree with you, just because it makes you feel good, and it makes you look good for your own side. And it’s something I’m constantly checking myself on. So, there was a chat at the end of the meeting I was at last night and I left thinking I should have done a better job of looking for where the common ground there was, but I had started to enjoy the argument a little bit too much. Enjoying the argument isn’t the point, winning the argument isn’t the point. Making the change and getting something done is the point.” 

Politics is what McDougall lives and breathes, and within the Labour Party he is well kent and well respected. But to some Scots who are still reeling from the failure to win independence in the 2014 referendum, he is also the pariah that helped lead Better Together.

Coincidentally, McDougall and I are speaking on the 10th anniversary of the day after that referendum. The day that Scotland woke up to the news that his side had won and the union was safe. I mention that the weather that day, like the general mood of the country, was muted. A hangover of a day. But I wonder if he had felt jubilant.

“No, I certainly didn’t. I was on the winning side but for us, we didn’t get up every day and think we were doing what we were destined to do in the way that the other side did. Because for us, although there were people within our coalition who thought of themselves as unionists as a core part of their political identity, for most of us, it wasn’t about that, it was a sideshow, a distraction.

“And so as much as there was 10 years ago, a sense of personal satisfaction, the overwhelming feeling was, well, thank God that’s over with, and now we can get on with real politics and make a difference to people’s lives. But then, of course, we didn’t for 10 years, which is another story, but basically the feeling the day after was one more of relief than anything else.

“For me, ten years on, the remarkable thing is that support hasn’t been higher for Yes, because they were handed such beautiful gifts by the Conservatives for so long. They were handed crisis after crisis – economic and political crises. And yet the needle has barely moved over that time. And I think the other thing that’s remarkable is that there’s about half a million mainly older No voters, who’ve passed away in that time, who have been replaced by younger, previously Yes voters ageing into No voters and again, nothing has moved. So, in many ways, given the Yes campaign didn’t really particularly draw breath, and given the No campaign didn’t exist technically for most of those 10 years, I think it’s pretty remarkable that Scotland is pretty much where it is.

“The thing I’ve had in my head this week is, and it’s partly because I was speaking to university freshers at fairs and things like that, I was thinking about when it was that time for me, and it was the ‘97 referendum when we did vote yes, and that whole conversation, that whole project of establishing devolution, was supposed to be about a consensus around a more socially just Scotland. I mean, that was sort of written into the Constitutional Convention and everything in those early days, and for a decade since 2014 there has been no consensus on anything in Scotland. 

“Every position you take is judged on the basis of a decision you took 10 years before. I think we’ve been given an opportunity as the Labour Party, and I think Anas [Sarwar] is incredibly skillful at it, to change that conversation. And while changing the conversation is a short-term thing, I think the challenge for us is, how do you change the story that Scotland tells about itself, the understanding of itself? 

“And I think that’s partly about getting back to that kind of spirit of ‘97 where we were meant to be working together. We were meant to be a different type of politics that wasn’t meant to be so confrontational. I think there is an opportunity to get back to that. I think it’s also a political necessity, and it’s a political necessity for us, but it’s also now a political necessity for the SNP, because if you are in the mess that they are in, in delivery terms and budget terms, personal terms, political terms and internal terms, consensus is your friend as well. Because you don’t want to be the one who’s arguing for the cuts that they are going to have to make or the other decisions that they’ve avoided for so long. So they will start now talking the language of consensus for reasons of self-preservation, not because it’s in their DNA, but because they have no choice and that’s going to be an opportunity for us to grab.

“I think you see it with Anas’s stuff in the chamber, the sort of philosophical divide that he’s trying to talk about. There’s a difference between a party that wants to govern and a party that wants to campaign. And I think we should want to be the ones to fix the mess. And I also think again, and that’s partly about Anas’s personality, but it’s also that we have shown that we can do coalition government in a stable way and work with other parties, and we can overlook difference. We showed that in the referendum as well.  There isn’t another party on the landscape who’s as equipped to do that, to actually pull Scotland together, around the possible budget choices and political choices that we’re going to face over the next decade in Scotland.”

McDougall with Yes Scotland chief executive Blair Jenkins in early 2014 | David Cheskin, PA / Alamy 

McDougall and I are talking as the news, that will continue to dominate headlines over the coming weeks, has started to break about donations made to Keir Starmer and his ministers which include such personal items as clothes for his wife, new spectacles, and a box at Arsenal. Set in the context of the controversial policy announcement about scrapping winter fuel payments to thousands of pensioners, I ask McDougall how as a politician, whose politics has been shaped by his own lived experience of poverty, squares that circle.

“Look, do I think things could have been handled better? Yes, but I also think there’s an element around Keir and his team that involves the fact that he is a deeply serious individual and I think when it comes to things like the clothes and so on, I think it’s not just that he’s not thinking about that sort of frivolous stuff, I think there’s a level where he has a contempt for it, because he is so determined to make bigger changes. I mean, his whole government is defined by a disdain for the short-term and a focus on the long-term. So, if you’re him and someone comes to you with a story about your wife’s party frock, you’ll be like, ‘oh, come on...’

“And yes, I accept that people are upset but they need to understand why we are making some of the changes we need to make, and they need that narrative to be told. I’ll give you an example. A chap came to talk to me about the cold weather payments and when he came into the room you could tell he was agitated and angry. You could tell he’d been practicing the conversation before he came in. He was civil enough, but he was angry about it. 

“At one point, he said, ‘you have declared war on pensioners’ and at that point I stopped him and said, just for a second let me explain, and I told him how the new state pension went up £900 this year, every penny of which he deserved, but I then asked him whether he could say how much the child element of tax credit went up this year which he couldn’t. I said, it went up by £200, just over £200. And I left that hanging. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. And then he went, ‘well, there were a couple of other things I wanted to talk to you about’. 

“So for me, on the winter fuel payment and on other hard decisions, we’ve got to be clear that in order for people to take the short-term, difficult decisions in their stride, it’s up to us to be clear about where we are walking to and what the big vision is and saying that this government was not elected to do quick fixes and short-term popular things. In fact, we were explicitly not elected to do that. We were elected to do the long-term, difficult work of fixing the structural problems in this country and that is what we are going to do.”