When Tony Blair offered Jim Murphy his first government position, he was away
for the weekend with friends. “Not political friends,” he says. “Actual
friends.” He slaps his forehead theatrically. “That sounds terrible. Friends
who are not involved in politics.”
They had been discussing the reshuffle on the journey there. So, when the
phone rang in his hotel room and the operator said, “Will you hold for the
prime minister,” his first thought was that his friends were winding him up.
“Aye, right,” he responded. To his astonishment Blair came on the line and
offered Murphy a junior position with Helen Liddell, then Secretary of State
for a pre-devolution Scotland.
Last Friday, he was sitting at his desk in the jumbled office in Clarkston
that he shares with the MSP Ken McIntosh. At about noon, his BlackBerry
squawked — he favours ringtones of the enraged robotic bird variety. Once
again, he was requested to hold for the prime minister. He scooted into the
carpeted cupboard where he holds constituency surgeries. “It could,” he
says, “have been a conversation about getting sacked as a minister in the
Foreign Office.” This is disingenuous: having handled the Treaty of Lisbon
well, Murphy’s name was comfortably in the frame for Des Browne’s job in the
Scotland Office. He had lobbied hard for it. Sure enough, Gordon Brown came
good.
Browne, who was also armed forces minister and spent a reported 85% of his
time worrying about Afghanistan and Iraq, was not considered to have shone
in this tricky post-devolution role. Enter Murphy, with a formidable
reputation as an organiser and ambitious right-wing operator. He will do the
job full-time, with no bothersome wars to distract him from his core job of
reversing the SNP’s progress, keeping the Scottish party in line and herding
those stray, floating voters back into the Labour pen.
With a seat on the National Economic Council, Gordon Brown’s war cabinet,
Murphy’s appointment sends out a strong unionist message: as part of the
United Kingdom, Scotland has a seat at the top tables and walks in the
corridors of power.
Murphy, who at 41 is the second youngest member of the cabinet, takes every
opportunity to underline this point. The voters of Glenrothes brave enough
to answer their doorbells or venture to the shopping centre will hear it as
well. The new Scottish secretary says he wants a grown-up, less adversarial
style of politics and is weary of the constant Holyrood v Westminster
punch-ups, yet leaps to compare the way Brown and Darling have protected
British interests through the world economic crisis with Salmond’s desire,
not so long ago, to emulate countries such as Iceland, which are currently
writhing in agony.
“I’m trying to be reasonable,” he says. “I don’t agree with the Conservatives
and the SNP, but we can have these debates at a time when the country isn’t
facing this crisis.” He tips his head back to look up at the clock. “I’ve
been in this job for an hour less than a week now. I’ve tried to set this
tone, to give confidence to businesses, small and large. It worked for a
couple of days, then you get the SNP saying, if we were independent, it
would all be fine.
“I find myself having to explain the truth. Look at this arc of prosperity,
what some commentators are now calling the arc of insolvency: Iceland,
Ireland and Norway.
“Iceland as a country is on the verge of bankruptcy. Ireland is officially in
recession. Ireland and Norway are trying to borrow from the US and Russia.
That’s not Scotland’s destiny. Scotland isn’t Iceland and it shouldn’t be
Iceland and as long as I’m doing this job I don’t want Scotland to be
Iceland.
“It’s not tub-thumping.” This is true: his voice is barely louder than a
whisper. “I’m trying to be reasonable, most Scottish families know that
we’re better off and stronger inside the fifth biggest economy in the world.
With a Scottish prime minister and Scottish chancellor, the way in which
Scotland has been able to exert an influence inside the UK and the global
economy, nobody really believes that an independent Scotland would have the
influence at this period of unprecedented turmoil that Scotland currently
has in the UK.”
Murphy, who has been a parliamentary private secretary, a whip and a junior
minister for employment and, pre-reshuffle, Europe, knows how to play this
game. According to those who have observed his career, he has been working
up to this for more than 20 years.
“He has been a career politician since he was a teenager,” says someone who
knew him as a Labour student activist in Glasgow in the 1980s. “He is a
political organiser rather than a thinker. When he was president of the
National Union of Students, his first priority was not education. It was
getting a Labour government elected.”
A Blairite before the term was even coined, Murphy was part of the shadowy
Network grouping that routed Labour’s left in the 1990s. This won him few
supporters in the Scottish party and distrust lingers among many activists.
Neither has the media greatly warmed to him, describing him as “stodgy” and
“Scotland’s Mandelson”, on account of his arch-modernising outlook. It does
not help that he is a teetotal vegetarian. His other known interests are
Celtic FC and his model train set.
Today, Murphy is wreathed in smiles and on his best behaviour, joking with the
photographer, whizzing me through Eastwood in his — surprisingly modest —
car to continue our interview while looking after his two sons. Claire, his
wife, apologises for not spring cleaning the house before dashing off to buy
birthday presents with their ten-year-old daughter. There is no sign of the
train set. Murphy sticks the kettle on, prepares himself a Tony Benn-size
mug of tea and produces a box of chocolates. They were a gift from a friend,
to celebrate his new job.
This job, however, is not to be Mr Congeniality. Whatever his official remit
might insist, Brown has ordered him, and Iain Gray, the new leader of Labour
MSPs in Holyrood, to make the party electable again. Winning the Glenrothes
by-election would be a very good start indeed. Earlier in the week, on a
flying visit to the constituency, Murphy announced that the prime minister
would be joining him on the campaign trail. Now, he seems less sure.
“I spoke to him and he’ll try. He’d like to go. But the right thing for him to
do is to lead the international rescue to the predicament that we’re in.
He’d be a real asset to have there, but his first priority is to make sure
families in Glenrothes get through this economic turmoil.”
With or without the prime minister knocking on doors, it will be a close call.
But Murphy is not wringing his hands. “Glenrothes is going to be really
tough. We are the underdogs. But when I was there the other day, I saw a wee
bit of arrogance in the SNP’s swagger. They already consider the job done.
When politicians get to job done, it’s a worrying place to be.” And as well
as playing the proud Fifer card, Murphy knows that the financial turmoil can
be turned to Labour’s advantage. “When you look at the world leaders,
Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi, Putin, Bush, which one of them has the most
economic experience? It’s pretty straightforward, Gordon Brown has more than
all the rest put together with 10 years as chancellor.
“The question for the people of Glenrothes is, who do you think can lead us
through this? Is it Gordon Brown or David Cameron? Is it Scotland inside the
UK, exerting that remarkable influence, or Scotland in that ‘arc of
prosperity’ with Iceland, Norway and Ireland?”
Although the economy is foremost in Murphy’s mind, he is also keen to
introduce fresh new policy ideas. He would like to see Scotland at “the
leading edge of green collar job innovation. I want to see hundreds of
thousands of Scots working in environmental industries, insulation,
regeneration, technology.”
Environmentally friendly jobs are not a hard sell. Welfare reform, also on his
to-do list, might be. “There are still too many people in Scotland who are
locked out of work.
“For those who are lazy and don’t want to work, even though they are able, I
think we should be looking at other measures, additional measures, being a
bit tougher.
“People with an illness, mental health issues, a disability, we need to do an
awful lot more to support them, to give them a chance to compete in the
labour market and get a job,” he says.
Will it work? Gray and Murphy have been friends for 20 years and make a more
convincing double act than Browne and Alexander. He astonished everyone in
1997 when, aged 29, he won Scotland’s safest Tory seat and became the
country’s youngest MP.
“I like being the underdog,” says Murphy. “I wouldn’t have stood as the
candidate in Eastwood otherwise.” In that case, the Scotland Office should
suit him just fine.
