Alison Thewliss

Alison Thewliss was elected as the Scottish National Party MP for Glasgow Central in 2015. . She joined the SNP aged 17, having been inspired by the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum. She canvassed for the party during the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections and shortly after worked as a researcher for Bruce McFee MSP. In 2007, she became a councillor on Glasgow City Council, one of a wave of SNP candidates to take seats from the Labour party. In the 2015 general election, amid an SNP landslide, she unseated the shadow international development minister and former deputy leader of Scottish Labour Anas Sanwar on a 27 per cent swing with a majority of 7,662. Following her election, she became the SNP’s shadow spokesperson for cities and joined the Communities and Local Government Committee. After the 2017 election, she became the party’s spokesperson for the Treasury. Thewliss has been outspoken on welfare issues and called on former chancellor Philip Hammond to lift the freeze on benefits, saying that failure to do so would be “particularly malevolent”. Her constituency has the highest immigration caseload in Scotland and she has called for better support for asylum seekers.