Jim Murphy emerged victorious from yesterday’s Scottish
Labour leadership election. Despite his decisive win with 55% of the vote in
the first round, he was definitely the wrong choice for Labour and for Scotland
So why do I think Murphy is the wrong choice for
Scotland? The reason is that he does not represent what the Scottish electorate
believe, nor what they want in a politician. Murphy has been a Westminster
politician since 1997, when he won election to his seat of _____, since then he
has plotted a course that marks himself as hardline New Labour. Amongst his
positions that offends many socialists is his defence of the disaster in Iraq,
his support for Israel and Trident, and his general neo-liberal approach to foreign
policy. To make matters worse his history as a politician is sketchy, back in the
1996 whilst he as President of the NUS (National Union of Students) he changed
the policy of NUS support for the student grant despite the fact that the
opposite had been agreed at the NUS’ conference in Derby that year. He was
condemned by a group of Labour MPs in the House of Commons for his “intolerant
and dictatorial behaviour” as President of the NUS. More recently in 2012 (two
years after the original expenses scandal) he was caught using a loophole which
allowed him to claim £20,000 in expenses for renting out accommodation in London,
whilst simultaneously renting out property he owned.
Facing off against Murphy were MSPs Neil Findlay and
Sarah Boyack. If Scottish Labour had been thinking straight, they would have
chosen Findlay as he was the perfect candidate for Scotland. Unlike Murphy,
Findlay was not a career politician having only joined the Scottish Parliament
in 2011 after spending 30 years in various professions, including brick layer
and teacher. He was by far the favoured candidates of the Unions, having received
official backing from ten of them. His policies were much more socialist than
Murphy’s, which makes him more in line with the Scottish electorate. Findlay
opposes Trident (Britain’s nuclear weapons program) and PFIs (Private Finance
Initiatives) in the NHS, he also wants to renationalise the railways and build
100,000s of new homes. He also is very pro-Palestine and wants to make the
living wage the minimum wage.
Many Scottish voters are dissatisfied with Labour, they
believe that the Party has drifted too far to the right over the past decade.
In the last six months support for the SNP has surged in the polls, at Labour’s
expense. If Labour wants to win back people who have defected in recent months,
the Party needed to elect someone who was in tune with what Scottish people
wanted.
When given the choice between a candidate whose policies
are similar to those of the Scottish electorate in the form of Neil Findlay,
and a candidate who is a Blairite and a Westminster MP in the form of Jim
Murphy, Scottish Labour chose the latter. Labour faces a wipeout in the 2015
General Election, Findlay could have stymied that. I believe that Murphy,
despite his charisma, will contribute to the wipeout.
