Blair McDougall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Blair McDougall is a political activist in the British Labour Party, best known as head strategist to the Better Together campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.[1]

He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where as chair of the Labour Club he was Ross Kemp's campaign manager during the 1999 Rectorial election.[2]

He went on to serve as chair of Scottish Labour Students 2001-2003 before becoming a special adviser to Ian McCartney, Minister for Trade, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.[3]

In 2006 he took the post of Youth Representative on Labour's National Executive Committee.[3]

Following Labour's defeat in the 2010 general election, McDougall coordinated David Miliband's unsuccessful campaign for the party leadership, and subsequently founded Movement for Change, an umbrella group for community organisers. He became Campaign Director of Better Together in 2012.[4]

After the No vote in the referendum on 18 September 2014, McDougall admitted that they would have struggled to win without "scaremongering".[5] He was given an advisory role in Jim Murphy's campaign for the Scottish Labour leadership.[6]

In April 2017, McDougall was confirmed as the Scottish Labour candidate for East Renfrewshire in the 2017 general election.[7][8] He came third in that election, with 26.7% of the vote, a fall in the Labour vote of over 7 points as compared with the 2015 election, in which Labour candidate Jim Murphy came second with 34% of the vote.[9]

In January 2020, Labour MP Jess Phillips hired McDougall as her Scotland adviser for her ultimately unsuccessful leadership campaign.[4]

References[]

  1. ^ "Better Together chief accused of 'bullsh*t' in pensions row".
  2. ^ "Grannie competes with EastEnders hardman for university rector's post". The Herald. 2 February 1999.
  3. ^ a b Pike, Joe (2015). Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided. Biteback Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84954-995-0.
  4. ^ a b "Jess Phillips hires Better Together boss as Scotland adviser".
  5. ^ Datoo, Siraj (22 September 2014). "Better Together Campaign Chief: We Would Have Struggled To Win Without 'Scaremongering'". BuzzFeed.
  6. ^ "Blair McDougall lands Jim Murphy advisor role". The Scotsman. Retrieved 22 July 2016.
  7. ^ "Better Together chief Blair McDougall to stand for election". www.scotsman.com.
  8. ^ "Better Together chief named as Labour election candidate". inews.co.uk. 26 April 2017.
  9. ^ "It's a win for the Conservatives Paul Masterton - and a resounding one at that!". Glasgow South and Eastwood Extra. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
Party political offices
Preceded by
Claire McCarthy
 Young Labour representative on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party
2001 – 2003 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from ""