Blair McDougall

Blair McDougall is a political activist in the British Labour Party, best known as head strategist to the Better Together campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.[1]

He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where as chair of the Labour Club he was Ross Kemp's campaign manager during the 1999 Rectorial election.[2]

He went on to serve as chair of Scottish Labour Students 2001-2003 before becoming a special adviser to Ian McCartney, Minister for Trade, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.[3]

In 2006 he took the post of Youth Representative on Labour's National Executive Committee.[3]

Following Labour's defeat in the 2010 general election, McDougall coordinated David Miliband's unsuccessful campaign for the party leadership, and subsequently founded Movement for Change, an umbrella group for community organisers. He became Campaign Director of Better Together in 2012.[4]

After the No vote in the referendum on 18 September 2014, McDougall admitted that they would have struggled to win without "scaremongering".[5] He was given an advisory role in Jim Murphy's campaign for the Scottish Labour leadership.[6]

In April 2017, McDougall was confirmed as the Scottish Labour candidate for East Renfrewshire in the 2017 general election.[7][8] 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 Labour candidate Jim Murphy came second with 34% of the vote.[9]

In January 2020, Labour MP Jess Phillips hired McDougall as her Scotland adviser for her ultimately unsuccessful leadership campaign.[4]