After five years in Westminster, Ian Blackford will be remembered for his verbose yet pugnacious speeches in the Commons and the weekly chorus of loud groans he prompted from Conservative MPs at prime ministers’ questions. Despite his dogged efforts to hold a series of Tory prime ministers to account – going toe-to-toe with Boris Johnson in a way that the more cautious Keir Starmer never felt able – the outgoing SNP leader has had a turbulent time with his own MPs, much of it self-inflicted.
His handling of sexual harassment claims made against the MP Patrick Grady by a young staffer was widely criticised after a leaked recording showed him urging colleagues to support Grady while failing to mention his victim. The 61-year-old MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber had kicked off 2022 by accusing Boris Johnson of wilfully misleading parliament after Sue Gray’s initial report found the Partygate scandal “difficult to justify”. Blackford’s determination in the Commons often left him open to playground-style insults from MPs including Johnson that mocked his weight. The pair are said to have enjoyed a cordial private relationship though, a fact not lost on some of his own backbenchers who viewed what they regarded as his “cosy” attachment to Westminster with suspicion. The outgoing leader became known for his love of a stunt after he was expelled from the chamber in 2018 by a flustered John Bercow, the former Speaker, after refusing to sit down in a protest over the failure to debate what he called a Brexit “power grab” from Scotland which prompted a mass walkout from colleagues. Blackford has described himself as a “humble crofter”, and regularly posted scenic photos of his island home on social media, but in fact he enjoyed a 20-year career in finance before becoming a politician. Edinburgh-born, he worked as a managing director for Natwest Securities before becoming a non-executive chairman of a telecommunications firm in 2006. After two failed attempts at winning a seat, Blackford managed to defeat Charles Kennedy in 2015 after a campaign mired in controversy over online abuse aimed at the former Liberal Democrat leader and his long-running battle with alcoholism. He now holds the seat with a majority of just under 10,000 votes. After two decades in the SNP’s political wilderness after attacking its then party leader Alex Salmond, Blackford staged a comeback by taking over from Angus Robertson as the leader of the party’s Westminster group in 2017. He has been credited with bringing more SNP politicians into the Commons, where the party holds 45 of the chamber’s 59 Scottish seats. Some of his MPs, however, have been jittery about Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to turn the next general election into a de facto independence referendum, and wanted a leader who was prepared to challenge that. They will expect Blackford’s successor, at this stage likely to be Stephen Flynn, the MP for Aberdeen South, to do so.