The report this week from the Glasgow Herald, alluding to the apparent Labour Party u-turn on the full devolution of tax-raising powers to the Scottish parliament, has people wondering what is going on in Scottish Labour.¹ They lack a leader at the moment, yet ‘handbrake turns’ in policy are apparently possible, without reference to the party membership, or indeed anyone else. Someone is making important and controversial executive decisions, that is clear enough.

Scottish Labour have suffered some crushing reverses since joining the Tories and Liberal Democrats in the Better Together campaign during the Scottish referendum. BT won the vote, but the fall-out for Labour has been as dire as it was predictable. The opinion polls have their predicted share of the Scottish vote collapsing to the point where they may return only a handful of MPs in May next year. A recent Ipsos Mori poll predicts they might be left with only 4 MPs representing constituencies north of the border.² In the meantime support for the SNP is skyrocketing.³

It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that Labour perceive an urgent need to try and reverse this monumental swing. The question is, who is making these decisions on the party’s behalf? Without a current leader, it’s clear enough that some unelected person is working behind the scenes. Who could it be?

Jim Murphy.jpg

Spud-u-like?

In a somewhat related development, Labour’s Jim Murphy MP (currently bidding to lead Scottish Labour) came out this week with a strikingly Damascene conversion to support for full tax-raising powers for Scotland. Murphy is not the Scottish party leader, of course, but you would never guess so were you to judge by the number of appearances he has made on terrestrial TV this week. I am told by friends who still watch BBC political programmes that his face is “never off” that channel. One more reason for me not to continue my private boycott.

Murphy has form when it comes to disregarding democratic principles. In 1995, as President of the NUS, he dropped its opposition to the scrapping of the student grant, despite the NUS conference voting otherwise. This resulted in his condemnation for “intolerant and dictatorial behaviour” in a Commons early day motion raised by Ken Livingstone and signed by 17 other Labour MPs. He got his reward from the party leadership shortly after, being offered a position as the Special Projects Manager of the Scottish Labour Party.

In an instance of opportunism of a slightly different sort, Jim Murphy was at the centre of an expenses row in 2012 when it emerged he was among 27 MPs who were letting out London homes at the same time as claiming public money to rent in the city. Although the practice did not break rules, it has been characterised as a “loophole” that allows politicians to profit from Commons allowances. Murphy had previously apologised “on behalf of all politicians” for the expenses scandal in 2009.

Contrary to all of the above however, it may just be that Mr Murphy does retain some core political values, at least in imperialistic terms. He is a member of the Henry Jackson Society, a neo-conservative think-tank founded to advance “the maintenance of a strong military, by the United States, the countries of the European Union and other democratic powers, armed with expeditionary capabilities with a global reach”.4

One cannot help but wonder whether such a candidate for the Scottish Labour leadership will reflect the sort of traditional Labour values so obviously required if that party are to beat off the appeal of the SNP’s centre-left programme. Perhaps he will win the leadership contest; but then again, perhaps he doesn’t feel he needs to.

Links

1. http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/unelected-person-making-policy-in-the-peoples-party.25960299

2. http://news.stv.tv/scotland-decides/297729-stv-poll-labour-would-annihilated-if-general-election-held-tomorrow/

3. http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/politics/9376072/meet-the-new-queen-of-scotland-nicola-sturgeons-unstoppable-rise/

4. http://web.archive.org/web/20060430054251/http://zope06.v.servelocity.net/hjs/principles_html