Douglas McAllister: I am now West Dunbartonshire’s equivalent of Donald Trump

What’s your earliest memory? 

My brother claims it is weird that I have memories from an early age. He can’t remember anything about our childhood. But I have memories from as early as two, and they are of a really happy household.  

I was brought up in a challenging council estate called Drumry in Clydebank, but all the memories are incredibly happy ones.  

The earliest is probably being in our family home with my mum, dad, and older brother. I remember vividly my brother being dropped off at primary school while I went to nursery, and then spending time with my mum before my dad and brother arrived home.    

I didn’t move out of that house until I was 27, and that is a testament to how happy a family we were, which is something I am aware is a privilege. 

Have you ventured far from Drumry? 

I live close by. My wife is from Drumry – we actually sat next to each other in primary one – and she moved out when she was 27 too. It’s my constituency now and we have stayed in Clydebank our entire married life. I have no intention of living anywhere else. I was the provost of West Dumbartonshire for two terms and I consider myself a proud Bankie.   

You seem to be quite a champion for your area. 

You won’t know this, but in March this year, our local authority – Labour-run, incidentally – took the decision that it could no longer run the only municipal golf course. It’s a very well-known course called Dalmuir, and it’s a beautiful 18-hole course but it costs a lot of money to run. It is a place where I had many happy memories playing with my brother as a kid. 

A lot of people thought I had lost my senses when I stepped forward and asked the council, rather than announcing the decision in its budget, if they could instead announce that they were setting up a task force led by the local MP to see if it could be saved. Within three months we had a community trust set up to take over management of the course. So as of July, I, as chair, and seven other trustees are managing the club now.  

The trustees are doing all the hard work, along with many volunteers. Some of my colleagues at Westminster find it very funny that I am now West Dumbartonshire’s equivalent of Donald Trump. I get a lot of ‘here comes Donald Trump with his golf course’ now, but it’s been a huge success and so it’s worth it. 

What were you like at school? 

I was very hardworking. I may have been seen as a bit strange, even at primary school, because when my teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to tell them a member of parliament. 

It was my ambition, so much so that one Christmas, my parents got me a parliamentary board game while other kids were getting Monopoly or Operation – maybe the latter is what Zubir Ahmed got. My brother used to cry when we played it because it was so boring but I loved it, passing private members’ bills and stuff like that. 

Both my parents were part of the Labour Party, as were my grandparents, and politics was always discussed. It had the opposite effect on my brother, who has a very good job with JP Morgan. He now likes to sit down with me on a Sunday and tell me where both I and Rachel Reeves are getting it all wrong. He’s got ‘great tips’ that he thinks I should be passing on to the chancellor ahead of the October statement – none align with Rachel’s or mine, incidentally, so you’ll understand why I’ve never shared them.  

Anyway, my parents got me involved in politics around the miners’ strike and I wore a badge that said ‘dig deep for the miners’ into either primary six or seven, and my teacher asked me to take it off. I told her no and she said she would allow me to wear it if I could explain to the class why I was wearing it. That was my first political speech and I was allowed to keep wearing the badge.  

You were a criminal defence lawyer for many years before you fulfilled your dream of being an MP. Tell me about that. 

I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I went to study law at the University of Glasgow because that’s what my political heroes Donald Dewar and John Smith did. I thought you had to be a lawyer for one or two years and then become a full-time politician. I suppose I then served the longest apprenticeship known to man – 28 years as a lawyer. 

Of course, I’m kidding. It was a great job and I loved those years, and I do miss the cut and thrust of being in court every day. I was very much a legal aid lawyer, and my job was to represent the most vulnerable people in society at times. I was a proud member of that profession, a profession that has taken a real hit from successive governments in relation to cuts.    

Who would be your dream dinner date? 

Aside from my wife and my two boys, my perfect guest would be Bob Geldof. I love that man’s passion for issues, and he may have no regard for politicians, but when the man speaks he just gets me emotional and has been a great hero of mine ever since the very early days.  

What’s the worst pain you’ve ever experienced? 

This is fairly personal. When I was 35 I was diagnosed with leukaemia, and I was very ill at that first point of diagnosis. It is chronic myeloid leukaemia – it’s controlled now by medication.  

I was wonderfully cared for by the people at the Beatson and was put on a trial drug, but over the five-year period of that trial, in order to tackle my illness, you had to get regular bone marrow scrapes, which is a bit like a lumbar puncture. With a very large needle, they go in behind your hip bone and take a scrape of your bone marrow; it’s extremely painful. The nurse holds your hand in a similar way to how they’d hold something in old Western movies, where they’d put something in their mouth to bite down on.  

What’s your guilty pleasure? 

I don’t know if I should admit this or not, but this year I thoroughly enjoyed Meet the Rees-Moggs. It was just box office; I binge-watched it. What an insight into his and his family’s life. I’m almost disappointed he didn’t retain his seat, and we didn’t get to rub shoulders together in the tearoom. I can’t wait for series two.