Something of a political icon, Mhairi Black, after a decade as an MP, decided not to run for Parliament again. This show is by way of showing two very important things: why she left the House of Commons and why we should not abandon politics.
In both, Black manages to convince with the degree of skill and charm that marked her out as an icon in the first place. She is an amiable raconteur and has a highly acute sense of who she is, what she offers and how she can help. Three great qualities that should have her elevated from icon to being in a public office that allows those qualities to be productively used. And that is one reason why she should not be in Westminster. It has chewed her up and made her a target, and she is now released from being part of a bubble that hinders your ability to comprehend people in the real world. This is central to what she has to say.
Structurally, she begins with mocking herself. Then she shows how her brother manages to take her feet and keep them firmly on the ground. It is hilarious to hear how the toxic abuse he gives comes from a place of love. But it does one thing which I think has an inverted purpose: it kept Black healthy. Until it got too much.
Once we got into the story of how, after the evening she became an MP and dethroned Douglas Alexander, the absurdity of her life—from oil paintings in Eton of umbrella-waving, cross-country fools, to playing Glastonbury as a political figure before yon socialist fella, to the way in which she was treated by her own party towards the end—is delivered in a coherent dismantling of the political system to which we look for leadership. That she finds it sadly wanting is a feeling that chimes with her audience inside the venue and outside at large, because we have less faith in the political system we have “enjoyed” than ever before. Black’s key skill is to give us an insider’s view as to why we have no wonder left in politics, which has led to such scepticism.
There are moments in this that are laugh-out-loud funny. They combine the whole thing together with a degree of absurdity that does not need a heavy punchline or the labouring of a point. But they lead to a peroration which is as serious as it gets. The fact is that Black has brought a show where the suggestion in the title is that she is finished with the whole damn game. She is not. She wants us to know that none of us should be either. In the context of the riots in England and Northern Ireland and the surge of battles over everything from self-determination to self-expression, there has never been a more prescient time for this type of exposé.
But the one major take away from this—I have friends in the House of Commons as MPs—is the isolation and camaraderie from unusual places, like a DUP MP being the first to congratulate her for her wedding. That unexpected hands across the divide are juxtaposed with attacks on her from fellow MPs when she was not well. Her response was to mock the Secretary of State for Scotland. It is a bold riposte, but one that captures the essence of Black, but it also does one thing more. It cements her as an icon of a breed that sees hersel as ithers sees her but refuses to accept their opinion as a final epitaph or as a sequence of chains.
Black has broken free, and the next stage somewhere will beckon. On the evidence of this, she is going to be quite the formidable presence. And not just the unionists should worry when this LGBTQEXSNPMPADHAD makes her move.