Blair McDougall | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2024 | |
| Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Small Business and Economic Transformation | |
| Assumed office 7 September 2025 | |
| Prime Minister | Keir Starmer |
| Preceded by | Gareth Thomas |
| Member of Parliament forEast Renfrewshire | |
| Assumed office 4 July 2024 | |
| Preceded by | Kirsten Oswald |
| Majority | 8,421 (16.8%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1978-06-03)3 June 1978 (age 47) |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater | University of Glasgow |
Blair McDougall (born 3 June 1978[1]) is aScottishLabour Party politician and former political adviser who has served as theMember of Parliament forEast Renfrewshire since2024. He is best known as head strategist to theBetter Together campaign during the2014 Scottish independence referendum.[2][3] He has served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Business and Trade since 2025.[4]
He was educated at theUniversity of Glasgow, where as chair of the Labour Club he wasRoss Kemp's campaign manager during the 1999 Rectorial election.[5]
He went on to serve as chair ofScottish Labour Students from 2001 to 2003 before becoming aspecial adviser toIan McCartney, Minister for Trade, Foreign and Commonwealth Office andJames Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in the governments ofTony Blair andGordon Brown.[6]
In 2006 he took the post of Youth Representative on Labour'sNational Executive Committee.[6]
Between September 2009 and July 2010, as part of an initiative led byTony Blair, McDougall worked for Rwandan presidentPaul Kagame as an "adviser on governance and strategic communications".[7]
Following Labour's defeat at the2010 general election, McDougall coordinated parliamentary engagement forDavid Miliband's unsuccessful campaign for the party leadership. He became Campaign Director of Better Together in 2012.[8] After the No vote in the referendum on 18 September 2014, McDougall explained a key element of success had been regular and rigorous voter research and message testing.[9]
In 2014, he was appointed to an advisory role inJim Murphy's successful campaign for the Scottish Labour leadership.[10] Murphy subsequently lost his seat to theSNP in the2015 general election.[11]
In April 2017, McDougall was confirmed as the Scottish Labour candidate for Murphy's former constituency ofEast Renfrewshire in the2017 general election.[11][12] 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 Murphy came second with 34% of the vote.[13]
In January 2020, Labour MPJess Phillips hired McDougall as Scotland adviser for her unsuccessfulleadership campaign.[8]
McDougall announced in July 2023 that he was running to be the Labour candidate forEast Renfrewshire at the2024 United Kingdom general election.[14][15][16] He was elected as MP for East Renfrewshire after beating incumbentKirsten Oswald.[17]
In 2024 until he became an MP, McDougall was a senior strategist at political lobbying firmArden Strategies.[18] According to his register of members interests, McDougall worked "as a consultant delivering international governance aid programmes for democratic activists in Belarus, Kosovo and Serbia", on behalf of theNational Democratic Institute from February to April 2024. He also worked as a consultant for the East West Management Institute, based in Georgia, USA.[19]
McDougall is the chair of the Stop Uyghur Genocide Charity.[19]
McDougall is married to Mary and has two children.[20]
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Claire McCarthy | Young Labour representative on theNational Executive Committee of theLabour Party 2001 – 2003 | Succeeded by |
