Scottish Labour’s Blair McDougall has been voted in as East Renfrewshire’s new MP.

Mr McDougall ousted the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald from the seat as Scottish Labour overturned almost a decade of SNP dominance in Scotland’s Westminster seats, taking a majority of constituencies.

The 46-year-old is known for being the head strategist for the Better Together campaign during the 2014 independence referendum, but here is a bit more about East Renfrewshire’s new representative at Westminster.

Who is Blair McDougall?

Blair Mcdougall was born and raised in East Renfrewshire where he attended Thornliebank Primary and Woodfarm High where he became head boy.

The area’s new MP, who attended Glasgow University between 2006 and 2009, has extensive experience working in political strategy and campaigning.

Starting as an election organiser, he has managed campaigns for the Scottish Labour Party and was previously a special adviser in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, working across five government departments, including the UK’s Foreign Office.

During his time working with the last Labour Government at Westminster, he worked on issues such as helping disabled people, the Olympics, anti-poverty strategies and international human rights.

As previously mentioned, Mr McDougall was the chief executive and campaign director for Better Together during the 2014 referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom.

From November 2014 until July 2016, he was the director of strategy and policy for the Scottish Labour Party.

In this role, he was responsible for managing the political strategy, communications output and policy platform of the party and the principal speechwriter and adviser to leader of party and shadow ministerial team.

As he told the Barrhead News last month, most recently he has been working around the world helping people to stand up against dictators like Putin.

In this role, Mr McDougall has worked in 30 countries around the globe from Albania to Zambia.

According to his profile on international development organisation Global Partners Governance’s website he previously lived and worked in Rwanda as a governance adviser in the office of the President.

Mr McDougall currently resides in East Renfrewshire.