Ian Blackford

Ian Blackford began his career working in a branch of the Bank of Scotland after finishing school. He moved to London and worked his way up to lead Deutsche Bank’s operations in the Netherlands and Scotland. His move into politics was in 1997, when he unsuccessfully stood as the SNP candidate for the Ayr constituency, and then later that year stood in the Paisley South by-election. In 2000, Blackford started to clash with the SNP’s leader, Alex Salmond, and lost his position as treasurer of the SNP. Blackford was elected as the SNP MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber in 2015. Following his election, he joined the Petitions Committee and became the SNP’s shadow spokesperson on pensions. Blackford was re-elected in 2017 with a slightly increased majority and became the leader of the SNP’s Westminster group. In this role, he has received plenty of press attention. He was famously ejected from the Commons in a EU Withdrawal Bill debate in 2018, which led to him walking out of Commons with other SNP MPs in protest at the lack of time to debate – this was the first time such an incident had happened in Prime Minister’s Questions, thus it gained a lot of traction after being broadcast on live television. Blackford has been critical of the government’s covid-19 policies and provisions. In October 2020 he said, “it is blindingly and blatantly unfair that just as health restrictions are being strengthened economic support is being weakened. The Chancellor needs finally to wake up to that logic”.