Màiri McAllan: I believe in John but might one day consider a leadership bid

The new housing secretary, Màiri McAllan, is the only member of the Scottish Government’s cabinet to have only ever known Scotland with the Scottish Parliament.

She was just six when Donald Dewar welcomed the reconvening of the parliament and while she says she can remember some sense of excitement, she also remembers just thinking that he “was very tall”.

“It was something that I knew people were excited about, but I couldn’t claim, at six, to have had an impression beyond the sort of thing that this just felt very exciting and Edinburgh looked nice. But it is, as you say, a notable point that I am certainly the first person in cabinet representing a whole generation of people who’ve only really ever known devolution in Scotland and that sort of increasing sense of nationhood.”

What there is no doubt of is McAllan’s passion both for independence and the SNP. She joined the party as a teenager and one of the first questions she asked her teenage sweetheart, now husband, on a first date was whether he supported independence.

“Sounds cheesy now but on the night we got together and yes, drink had been taken, although maybe at 15 or 16, I shouldn’t admit that now, but yeah, I asked him, probably a little slurred, ‘Do you support independence and are you a nationalist?’ I’m not saying it was a deal breaker, but it felt important enough to me at the time and as it happened, he does support independence, but he doesn’t actually care for party politics, in fact, he thinks it’s a lot of nonsense!”

Nonsense or not, McAllan first stood for election in the 2017 general election aged just 24 when she was beaten by the incumbent David Mundell. In 2021, she was elected to the Scottish Parliament as MSP for Clydesdale and, within weeks, had been promoted by the then first minister, Nicola Sturgeon – for whom McAllan had been a special adviser – as Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land Reform. Within two years, the new first minister, Humza Yousaf, made her Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition, and McAllan became Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy under the premiership of John Swinney a year later when she also went off on maternity leave. She returned a year later into a new cabinet role for housing.

She’s had a stellar rise through government ranks, notably missing out on being a backbench foot soldier or grafting in committees, which she freely admits. Despite her relative inexperience, she is viewed as a future first minister and, in 2023, when she was awarded Holyrood’s ‘One to Watch’ award some in her party considered that accolade behind her trajectory, even at that nascent stage of her political career.

Comparisons between her and Sturgeon are drawn regularly: both were elected as young women, trained in law, are University of Glasgow graduates, come from families involved in SNP politics, both are relatively shy and can be guarded, even defensive. Indeed, some of McAllan’s manner in the chamber echoes the Sturgeon ‘I won’t take lessons from…’ playbook. However, McAllan says that the comparisons always surprise her because while she is a huge admirer of Sturgeon, they are “very different people”.

“I can see why the comparisons are made between me and Nicola and no, I don’t find that difficult. Nicola is someone that I’m very personally fond of and very proud of as the leader of our party and first minister for eight years. I think the things that I admire her most for are the sort of lawyerly traits that she had… studious, over the detail, concerned, empathetic, and she was the perfect Covid leader… so, no, I don’t find the comparison hard. I think it’s probably not that accurate, though, because we are quite different.”

This is one of the first profile pieces that McAllan has agreed to do. She says that is “probably deliberate” and that she has never sought this kind of publicity. “I guess I’ve just always felt that my job is not about promoting myself, it’s about working for my constituents and that’s what I am happiest doing.”

Consequently, there’s not a lot of background information out there, so I start by asking her: ‘Who is Màiri McAllan?’

“Oh, where do I start,” she laughs, which she does a lot. “Well, I think my family would say I was quite a serious child. I liked my own company, but you know, there were also lots of friends, and we had a very happy upbringing. It sounds cliched to say this, but I told my primary five teacher that I was going to be a lawyer… I always had a real sense of duty. Does that sound strange?

“I had a sense of looking at the world around me and sort of seeing things that I felt were unfair. Even as a child, I remember being in the playground in primary school and seeing the way the boys treated the girls and getting really angry about it, which, to be fair, the girls didn’t always thank me for pointing out. My mum and dad always encouraged us to question the world around you – not to accept things at face value. And I suppose I’ve always done that.

“I don’t really know where that comes from but I am the middle child in a family of three girls and because there’s quite a big gap between me and my youngest sister, I spent most of my time as the youngest, and maybe that has something to do with it because when you have an older sibling, you learn from them and build on that confidence but I also had parents immersed in public service with a dad as a police officer and my mum, a civil servant. But wider than that, where did my voice and my feelings about social injustice come from? I really couldn’t tell you, it’s just something I’ve always felt. But I think I’m quite a split personality as well, because whilst I have that desire to use my voice to speak out and be heard and that real sense of social conscience and passion to make things better from a very early age… I’m also quite quiet, and I quite like just being out in the hills and enjoying my life in the countryside, and being solitary.

“I am driven… I guess my drive does come partly from observing my mum and dad closely and they worked really hard. Famously within the family, the story was that my parents started off life together with minus £2,000 when they got married. They spent their honeymoon in Govan, where they lived. And that was their story and they both worked extremely hard as public servants and gave us a secure life in that I’ve never, ever wanted for anything, and I don’t mean in material terms, we were just engulfed by that feeling of warmth and being part of something special but also knowing that not everyone had that luxury of family and that sense of security.”

McAllan grew up in Biggar, went to the local state school, studied law at Glasgow University and married her teenage boyfriend, Iain Renwick, a local farmer, in Biggar Kirk two years ago. Last summer, she gave birth to baby Somhairle [after Sorley MacLean, the Scots poet] and has just returned to work from maternity leave, into the new role of housing secretary which she says is “dear to her heart”.

If her background all sounds quite Enid Blyton, McAllan reveals that when she was 15, in an attempt to leave school, she walked into an army recruitment office and signed up to serve, much to the shock of her mother, who took a call from the recruiting sergeant. She told him to send her daughter straight home and not call back.

McAllan laughs and says it was just “testing the boundaries”.

“I would say that I had some fairly normal teenage years, I could be quite rebellious but always retained that feeling that I was quite lucky, because I had a voice and I knew how to use it.”

I suggest that being married to the man she met at 15 isn’t exactly an obvious act of rebellion. She laughs again and jokes that loyalty as well as duty could be added to her list of characteristics.

“Look, I think in some ways, both Iain, my husband, and I would have said, this is mad, here we are, having met as teenagers, now married and parents to Somhairle, but it just always worked for us. And he’s a hugely important influence in my life. He’s so different from me, in many ways. He’s so calm. He is a farmer and is deeply stoic. And you know, I take a lot from that, and actually… it was my grandfather that was somebody who I looked up to a lot when I was younger. He was in the British Army and he was born in the 30s… one of eight or nine kids, had to work really, really, hard. And he was just somebody who was quietly gentlemanly, hardworking, stoic, and had real resilience. And these are all attributes that I really admire and try and live my life by. I think being stoic is a coping mechanism for everything that we face today and all the balls that we juggle.

“I recognise it would be hard to do what I do without Iain’s support. Childcare is a very live issue for us just now, and we’re both kind of trying to work it out because, I suppose, previously we came from a situation where I could say, I’m not going to be home tonight or I’m working til 10 and I’ll pick up some food on my way home, you just do your own thing. That’s changed and we’re both in jobs that we could work at and never be done, and now we’re trying to find our way through with a baby… I do sometimes wonder whether it would be helpful to cope with the load of this job if you have a partner who is in the same ballpark, even the same arena, you know, in politics, but our working lives couldn’t be more different. In many respects, Iain thinks politics is ridiculous, and I share that view in many ways. There are parts of this job that I really don’t like, the exposure and the attention that it brings, but it is where I want to be.”

When it came to politics, joining the SNP wasn’t a foregone conclusion for McAllan. But her decision was informed by what she could see around her.

“Growing up in South Lanarkshire, going to my local state school, it was very much a microcosm of Scotland, and I had friends on both ends of the socio-economic spectrum, and that was really influential to me. And I don’t know, honestly, to what extent you kind of apply your view now to how you felt then, but I sort of remember looking back and thinking Labour have got a real stronghold on Lanarkshire, and doesn’t it just feel crushingly mediocre? And to me, it felt like Scottish Labour were the politics of ‘know your place, get back in your box’. And then along came Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, who said, ‘Right, Scotland, head up, shoulders back, we’re going forward’. That can-do attitude just resonated with me. That whole attitude of, ‘we don’t need to rely on anyone else to tell us what to do, we’ve got enough in ourselves to do this’, that really appealed to me.

“I think it was aspirational for a young teenager to hear that kind of thing. It was around that time that I was applying for university, and I remember sitting with a friend on one side who was of the upper echelons of society, if I could put it that way, and someone whose family had really struggled, and we all sat there, and we applied to university, and it didn’t matter what kind of family we came from. None of us were concerned about if our parents could pay, all that we had to be concerned with was that we could get our grades. And I saw that the SNP had delivered that for us, so the combination of those things just naturally led me to the SNP... people would tell me I was mad, that the SNP were going nowhere… I guess I was just at the tail-end of all of that, because obviously people who had supported the SNP for years before that had been experiencing that kind of abuse for decades, but then the referendum came, and being an SNP supporter and wanting independence just became a very normalised issue.

“I am party political. I’m one of these people that for me, my involvement in politics is all about the SNP and it’s the pursuit of Scottish independence and social justice, and the SNP is my home. I can never understand when people cross the floor to join another party. And I’m not being tribal about that. I mean it in a serious way, because politics is not a game. Politics is about your core beliefs and mine just couldn’t change, they are completely wrapped up in the SNP and that pursuit of independence.

“And of course, it plays into my role in government, but I will look to work with others with centre-left approaches to things. And although Labour does a fairly good job of being something other than centre-left, you do look for alliances that you can form on an issue-by-issue basis. But I would far sooner have nothing to do with politics than be in any other party but the SNP.

“I guess, in terms of my political beliefs and what drives me, the two big ones are improving the lives of women and children, and the pursuit of independence. But not just independence for itself, it’s about being informed by my legal background. I believe really strongly in human rights, and I’ve always been interested in how the citizen makes their voice heard in a well-functioning democracy, and Scotland in the UK is not a well-functioning democracy.”

Understanding what motivates McAllan, the politician, can’t be assessed via a lengthy political hinterland. But it’s surely enough that at 32, she’s an engaging, articulate and intelligent woman who says being a feminist is as instinctive to her as pursuing independence, and both are driven by a sense of injustice. Outside politics, she only practised law for about a year and a half following seven years of training before entering government as a special adviser. Having been elected as an MSP in 2021, tipped to be the next leader of her party, and the next first minister of the country, I ask her if that lack of deep life experience is something she believes is missing or that she has to try and compensate for and justify herself?

“Definitely, I run myself or I used to run myself ragged, because I knew it wasn’t just a sense, I knew I had to be 10 times better, 100 per cent more prepared than somebody – a man – 20 years my senior would have to be, and of course their own 20 years and their life experience is a good thing …  but it doesn’t immediately qualify them as being better. But of course, I am conscious of that whole attitude of ‘what does this wee lassie know?’ And I put pressure on myself because of that. When I first started out, and I would do interviews, I’d be on myself … I would come away and there’d be a criticism of some kind or another online, and I’d think, right, you need to work on that, you need to be better. You need to come back next time and not stutter or have a better explanation for that or just be better. And then I realised that actually, that doesn’t work either because what some commentators, what some just downright nasty folk want is for you to say nothing. They just want you to be too worried to open your mouth and I’m not having that.

“People are human, you know. And you’ll have noticed this… the commentary around politics, and the sort of ecosystem just becoming more vicious. And that’s not to say that politicians shouldn’t be held to account, but I think that’s certainly one of the frustrations I have is that it’s not always reasonable, and it’s not always conducive to good.”

This is clearly a raw nerve for McAllan about how she can be perceived but also highlights her vulnerability given the criticism she gets, particularly online. Obviously, she mulls over things and says that she has had to get tougher. What has been one of the worst moments, I ask.

“That’s a good question. I’m not really sure. I suppose it’s some of those things that I spoke about where I have been taken out of context, or it’s certainly felt to me that I’ve been taken out of context, and I felt like I didn’t have a right of reply. That is quite disarming. So if I give you an example – when I came into the housing brief, I came back from maternity leave in the morning and we go out on a visit and I’m chatting away to the journalist before the interview, and it’s entirely up to a journalist however they want to present their work, but we’d had a good conversation, a friendly conversation. I’d been telling her that my baby had been up all night, but it was great to be back, etc, etc. And then we launch into this interview, and then the question becomes all about how many people are waiting for a social home. And I was trying to explain that, well, actually, I’d break them down, children in temporary accommodation, temporary accommodation that’s unsuitable, and so on, because I need to know the details in order to respond to that correctly. You also want to say that, well, actually, we don’t work necessarily with an overall number because it’s difficult to know how many people are on more than one list at once. It’s not as clear-cut as the questioner would like. But none of that matters and then that becomes an article on STV News that says housing secretary doesn’t know the numbers’, and in quotation marks. Who are they quoting? I did feel a little ambushed at that point and did worry about it and questioned whether I should say something as a right to reply but this is going back to that point where I’ve never really tried to correct or formulate a public persona. I just felt I’m not going to bother because you can’t win.

“But yes, it does bother me because of the way it presented me, and because I didn’t feel like I could give my side of it, and nor actually would it matter if I did, because the video was running, the impression is set, and it wasn’t just about having come back from maternity leave, I had been in the job for five days, something like that, I was trying to give a more detailed answer. And you know, I thought about the journalist afterwards, and honestly, I just thought we had been having a conversation about whether she might ever like to start a family, and I just hope that no one ever does something similar to her.”

Does having Somhairle mean she has returned to politics with a different perspective?

“Oh, yes, it has given me strength. I feel like a different person. I feel that once you have been through something as visceral as labour, as childbirth, growing, birthing and keeping a human being alive, what men sitting at home behind their keyboards choose to spend their days saying about me just doesn’t matter. It means a great deal less to me. It used to bother me. I just feel stronger now, and I think also that the protection of children has always been a significant concern of mine and before qualifying in the legal practice that I did, I had applied for a job in child protection, and I got a second interview so that has always been something I cared about. And now, as a mother, you know, you look at your own kid and you picture that you’re the mother living in the mould-ridden house, and that drives me. It’s about empathy... and you have to put yourself in other people’s shoes and question how you could live like that.”

Is it that ‘mother’ that is in her mind as she approaches the housing crisis challenge?

“Yes, and look, it’s not easy, there’s a number of problems just now in the housing space. It’s under extreme strain. But I have said, unapologetically, that I will prioritise getting children out of temporary accommodation who’ve been in there for a long time. I can’t have that, and I also care very much that women who are leaving abusive scenarios can get the protection of the state that they need. Now, that’s not to the detriment of everyone else, because the majority of people presenting as homeless are single men, but I have to say that those are my values and that’s where I start.”

While a trainee solicitor, McAllan, with others, co-founded Reb Law Scotland, the Scottish arm of the international human rights organisation set up to offer legal representation for marginalised groups and fight social injustice, with homelessness one of its key issues. Would she, if still a Reb Law lawyer, be challenging the government on its homelessness record?

“Ah, well, yes, I think I’d be challenging them … and I am… The difference is, I’m holding the responsibility now, and it just makes it all the more acute, doesn’t it? I personally feel that responsibility… the weight of it. And I think that’s a good thing. Nobody wants frivolous game-playing politicians. That’s just not what people want. But equally, you have to be able to see the wood for the trees.

“I think we will be out of an emergency situation when we get back to a situation where the system can cope, where the availability of housing can meet the needs of those presenting as homeless. But it is such a wide issue. It’s austerity, it’s mental health, it’s physical health, it’s social security, it’s justice. It’s all encompassing and I’m keen to see a more public-health approach taken to it because housing underpins everything else.”

When on maternity leave, which let her get out of “the bubble” and recognise the fundamental issues that matter, I suggest taking full maternity leave also signposted how, for women in politics, time has moved on and that was a good thing?

“It absolutely is. Kate [Forbes] and I discussed it before I went on leave and everyone who does it moves things further along. But I suppose I’m also quite keen not to just make it out to the world as though it’s so doable… because it is so hard. And it’s not just in this job. This job is particularly, I think, because it’s just so all the time. You’ve got your role of government… your role as a parliamentarian, your obligations to your party, it’s three jobs, and then you’ve got your baby. So, it is tricky. And I suppose, insofar as I can represent something, it’s not that women easily have it all, it’s actually that you should have the opportunity to but you need support, and you need allowances to be made, but fundamentally, that we will be a better country when women, whether they have families or not, but young women starting families can make a difference in government, and they need to be there.”

Returning to McAllan’s description of birth as being ‘visceral’ – what did she mean?

“It’s hard to describe, but you come back as a different person because so much of being a woman brings you strength, and so much of being a woman in society actually challenges you, and I just feel that I’ve shown a lot of strength through pregnancy and birth, maybe not just for myself, but I’ve got a massive renewed respect for mothers. And you know, when I was on leave and if I was having problems, I would ask my husband, I’d maybe ask the health visitor, and then you might just put something into your social network, and this solidarity that you got back from other women, you’ve never known solidarity like it until you’ve messaged other mums at three in the morning asking, ‘What the heck is going on with X, Y or Z?’, and it’s amazing.”

I tell McAllan that Kate Forbes had described things similarly, about a womanly strength that she had never known she had until she gave birth, which leads onto the topical issue of what is a woman. I ask her, given the Sandie Peggie vs Fife Health Board tribunal case, does she regret the way the trans issue debate and gender recognition reforms played out? Her candour surprises me, given perhaps the assumption that she would be in lockstep with Sturgeon on this.

“Yes, I think so. I do think so, because we’re no further forward… I know what it feels like to be a woman. I have known the pain of menstruation. I have known the embarrassment of men’s advances, unwanted advances at times. I’ve known what it’s like to give birth. I know what it is to be a woman, but I also accept that there are people who may have been born physically as men but who feel, chemically, that that’s not who they are, and I see that as part of the rich diversity of human life.”

But does that make them women?

“Well, I accept the outcome of the legal ruling because I am very clear about the importance of law, and I accept the ruling on that point. And, you know, I think that trans people, trans women, are in many ways distinct from women, but ought to be celebrated for who they are. And we should find ways of making sure that the rights of everyone can be upheld. And that’s something we’re very accustomed to. Human rights law in its entirety is about balancing rights. So, we just need to try and do that and get on with it.”

Does she regret the way Sturgeon’s legacy has been tarnished by the issue?

“I want Nicola to have the opportunity of happiness and peace and to be able to do whatever she does next, knowing that she led the country for eight years, and I believe it is a better place because of that. And I want her to be able to enjoy the accolades that should come with that, and I think she is doing that now.”

And on the question of whether she is a first minister in waiting, is that a job she wants?

“Well, look, I never worked with Alex, but I have worked extremely closely with Nicola, and I’m very close with John, and I therefore have a unique insight into how difficult the job is…”

I point out she missed one first minister out.

“Oh, so I did. But to be honest, Humza’s year was a particular example of how difficult things can be. It was very stressful, and I think it had been since the previous first minister had stood down and we had that leadership contest. But I remember when I realised that John was going to stand once Humza had said he was standing down, I don’t think people appreciated just how much we, as a party, kind of looked over the precipice, and I remember when John confirmed he was going to stand, how absolutely delighted I was because, of course, it hadn’t been viewed as an option. And I think he’s fantastic and I back him to the hilt. He is quite uniquely able to bring people together, and he’s done it. So, when I was actually on maternity leave and having gone through that very stressful period, I knew I could go away knowing that the government and the party were in good hands.

“I would say that any time overseen by either Nicola or John has been, not easier, and this is not actually the fault of Humza, he just had an extraordinarily difficult time because he inherited a party that was divided after the leadership contest, and he came in after the departure of Nicola and a whole series of very difficult policy issues and other issues that the party was going through. To be honest, I don’t think he got the chance that he should have. I think Humza is a clever and empathetic man who should have had the opportunity to be there for longer, and it was circumstantial, and I certainly wouldn’t have liked to have done what Humza did.”

Does she wish she had stood that first time round?

“Definitely, no. And I think it goes back to your question about experience. When I do a job, I want to do it well, so I’m just pleased that we have John now, and he said publicly he’s going to take us into ‘26 and if we’re re-elected, he’ll be serving the full term, and that brings me a lot of comfort. I think that he is the best person to lead the party. I think he’s the best person to lead the government, and I think that he could lead us to independence.”

Why is she so reluctant to say that she would be interested in the top job when men are rarely backwards at pushing themselves forward?

“Well, yes, and I think we need to understand why that is. I mean, a man could have gotten to my position and not had half the hassle that I’ve had so he might not be quite as reticent, if I even am reticent to confirm one way or another. Look, I don’t seek that kind of power if that’s the right word for the leadership position. I don’t seek it, but that sense of duty is always with me and if I ever felt that it was the right thing to do, I would consider it. But for the time [being], for this period, and into the next, I believe it will be John. I believe it should be John.”