Labour’s new leader in Scotland has abandoned his Blairite instincts to try to outflank the SNP on the left and avoid a wipeout at the general election
First an apology. Readers south of the border may have been under the impression that the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, the former shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy, was a Blairite moderniser who supported the restoration of tuition fees, market reforms in the NHS and opposed the devolution of income tax to Scotland because it risked the integrity of the United Kingdom.
We now realise that this was a wholly false impression.
Murphy is actually a tax-and-spend socialist who is aiming to restore the 50p rate in Scotland before the UK; wants to use the mansion tax on London properties to pay for 1,000 more nurses in Scotland; supports the renationalisation of rail north of the border; and is promising a new and deeper form of home rule for Scotland in which Holyrood would have complete power over welfare.
Apologies for any misunderstanding that might have been caused …
The hyperactive Murphy is attempting something quite extraordinary in Scotland right now. He is trying to outflank the Scottish National Party on the left, by rebranding Labour as a neo-nationalist ‘socialist’ party. He has even announced that he is going to use the slogan ‘Yes for Labour’ at the general election on May 7.
Well, desperate times require desperate measures. The recent batch of constituency opinion polls conducted by Lord Ashcroft confirmed that Labour faces a wipeout in Scotland at the election. On the figures the only Labour MP left in Glasgow – formerly Labour’s heartland – would be Willie Bain in Glasgow North East.
Lord Ashcroft also revealed that in some Labour areas, Ed Miliband is actually less popular than David Cameron. No one, not even the SNP, has believed the recent run of national polls showing a 20% lead over Labour; now they do. Which is why Labour’s Scottish leader appears to have undergone an ideological brain transplant.
He is even willing to pick fights with his own Labour colleagues in England. Diane Abbot, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, and David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, were furious when Murphy announced that he would like to take cash from the mansion taxes in London to boost NHS spending in Scotland. What about our deprived communities, they complained?
But Murphy insisted that this was how the Barnett Formula works – taking money from the rich south and giving it to the less rich north. It’s not quite as simple as that, of course. Specific tax revenues are not taken from one region and given directly to another. Many thought Murphy was irresponsible to present it as a regional tax grab, but he was happy to demonstrate his autonomy from ‘London Labour’.
He also wants to show he’s tough on the rich by promoting the 50p tax band. The SNP are cagey about doing this if it isn’t in place in England, because those liable to pay might simply hop over the border taking their taxes, and businesses, with them. Murphy claims it could raise over £200m a year and is worth the risk.
The SNP under Alex Salmond stole Labour’s clothes in the 1990s after Tony Blair took over and there’s no logical reason why Labour should not steal them back. The trouble is that they don’t fit Murphy very well because of his political background. He was edged out of Miliband’s inner cabinet because he was regarded as too right-wing.
Not any more. New Jim is doing a reverse Blair, taking Labour left in order to catch some of those voters lost to the SNP. But with the general election campaign only a matter of weeks away, he has a huge task persuading enough of them in time that he really is a new man.
Iain Macwhirter is political commentator on the Sunday Herald
