Government backs Blair for EU Presidency
Fraser Nelson 3:56pm
I interview Jim Murphy in tomorrow's Spectator, in which he gives his endorsement to Tony Blair as EU president. For the first time, we're running a longer version of the piece online (click here). I've always rated Murphy, ever since I saw him shout down Trots in my student days at Glasgow. Coffee Housers are normally suspicious when we praise Brown's younger ministers - what, it is asked, have they ever done? This isn't a Cabinet, it's a creche. Now, many of these criticisms are valid. But I consider Murphy a cut above for the following reasons:
1. He turned the safest Tory seat in Scotland into one of Labour's safest seats in Scotland, using exhausting and innovative campaign methods which transcended party loyalties. He calls it "retail politics" - surgeries on train platforms, supermarkets etc. He didn't inherit a safe seat: he made one.
2. He understands welfare reform, and doesn't try to downplay the situation by making out Britain has full employment. He is alone (as far as I know) in admitting today's mass joblessness flies in the face of Labour's values. The party, he says, was not founded on a "right not to work".
3. I strongly disagree with the party line he is paid to trot out on the hated Lisbon Treaty. But at least he treats opponents with respect, and would never roll his eyes in mock disdain in the European Scrutiny Committee like Miliband did.
4. He is not one of those Conway/Michael Martin figures who came from a working class background to try and behave like a lord. His life remains in Scotland (his wife has only twice visited him in London) and when I asked him if his job was tough he said not as tough as those he grew up with on his Glasgow housing estate have it now. His father, a plumber by trade now aged 60, still works on a construction site.
5. He is not a greasy pole climber. A few years ago, one of his fellow MPs solemnly told me that Murphy had "gone all family-orientated" and wouldn't put in the hours in Westminster. On my way out of the interview he made a joke about Gordon Brown in front of Fiona Gordon, the PM's political secretary. That's the very opposite of careerism, and I quite like it.
Anyway, you can read the interview here - or the abridged version in tomorrow's magazine.
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David Lindsay
February 13th, 2008 4:20pm Report this commentSee my blog for the beginning of the absolutely serious search for a pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war alternative candidate to Tony Blair for President of the EU. We need an economically social-democratic moral and social conservative who recognises that national sovereignty is essential to both aspects of that position, and that it precludes domination by the United States (the driving force behind European federalism since the 1940s) or anywhere else. And we need someone who recognises and unconditionally opposes the Trotskyist and Fascist roots of neoconservatism, and its relationship both with Islamic militancy and with remnant or revivalist Nazism. Any suggestions, with contact details if at all possible? davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com
Adrian
February 13th, 2008 4:41pm Report this commentYes, Jim is the real deal. Something we agree on.
Richard Jenkins
February 13th, 2008 5:05pm Report this commentOK so he's a good guy. Shame about the government he's a part of.
JR
February 13th, 2008 5:11pm Report this commentJim Murphy impressed me a lot when I worked with him. Compentent, hard working and funny with a good political radar. He also wanted to make himself an expert and briefed himself (through reading) on wisconcin style welfare reform, it's positives and negatives.
Michael Huntsman
February 13th, 2008 5:13pm Report this commentThe problem with your encomium for this man is that he demonstrates by his actions two characteristics which are on any level unsavoury but in a Minister of the Crown charged with looking after British interests in Europe are positively disgraceful: he is both dishonest and dishonourable. Dishonest because he peddles the psittacine mantra that this is 'not the constitution' and that the 'constitutional concept is dead'. I assume he is an intelligent man and therefore unlikely actually to believe this (who does believe it apart from the Lib 'Dems' and Denis MacShane?). He is dishonourable because of his abjuration of his promise to give us a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, a position which he founds on the act of dishonesty to which I have adverted. You say he treats his opponents with respect: yet every time I have seen or heard him debate this issue he has done so with a contempt for the intelligence of his interlocutor and for the British people and a singular unwillingness actually to engage upon the substance of the argument. He may not roll his eyes like the Chief Boy Scout, but he is the one piloting or rather railroading through Parliament a Bill that significantly damages the independence of the United Kingdom Parliament. Not something I would wish to end up with on my CV.
mart
February 13th, 2008 5:27pm Report this commentFraser, Your kind comments about Mr Murphy are no doubt sincere. But your phrase "the party line he is paid to trot out" sticks in the craw. He absolutely has a choice whether to serve in the government, and as such we have to assume he believes the comments he makes, and the course of action he proposes over the Lisbon Treaty. The reports of the impact of this Treaty upon Britain's constitution, and Parliament's apparently supine attitude to the whole subject, is saddening to read. (I refer the honourable lady/gentleman to John Redwood's diary entries for more).
Craig Strachan
February 13th, 2008 6:29pm Report this commentYes, a very fair assessment of Jum Murphy. Although I think maybe you give him too much credit for creating a safe seat out of Eastwood. Behind the lace curtains, Newton Mearns has always been a hotbed of socialism.
Max Kaye
February 13th, 2008 6:30pm Report this commentIt sounds like managed to hoodwink you into thinking that he's some kind of 'good guy'. He isn't (see Michael Huntsman above).
Also, I'm confused: He says: "My family came here from Ireland 50 or 60 years ago but they never left the United Kingdom. In political terms, that’s where I am - a Unionist." Except, I assume, when they emigrated to South Africa in 1980 for 6 years and young Jim skipped the country so as not to serve in the army. If he hadn't have faced the draft, would he still be there?
Max Kaye
February 13th, 2008 6:34pm Report this commentDavid Lindsay - please stop hijacking this site to advertise your lightly-frequented blog. Your opinions are, well, your own (it's the politest thing I could say about them) but it is highly ill-mannered to advertise your poorly-selling wares on someone else's site.
TGF UKIP
February 13th, 2008 7:01pm Report this commentHold on a minute. This is the same Murphy who issued the lying leaflet featured in James' post of yesterday "They really don't want you to have a referendum." Seems to me that Michael Huntsman and Max Kaye, and not you Fraser, have this guy's real number. Sometimes I really do wonder about your choice of heroes.
Fraser Nelson
February 13th, 2008 7:29pm Report this commentTGF, I don't argue Murphy is a political pin-up - just one of the better eggs in this government. And its daft to argue they're all venal morons. Michael & Mart are right: what JM is doing over Lisbon Treaty is an outrage and will forever stain his CV. The Spectator will fight him over it. But, to borrow his phrase, we will also "play the ball and not the man". His work with Hutton on welfare was truly impressive - it was him who blew the whistle on it and found the devastating stat that someone on IB for two years is more likely to die than work again. Anyway there are two type of Labour MP: those who ignore the problems (or seek to airbrush them out using dodgy stats, like Brown) and those who recognise them and seek to confront them. In the latter category I'd place Milburn, Hutton, Field and Murphy.
TGF UKIP
February 13th, 2008 8:49pm Report this comment"Play the ball and not the man" exactly what he isn't doing when confronted by a referendum on his own patch. Instead he instinctively reaches for the first New Labour resort - lying. As for being "just one of the better eggs in this government" oh yeah! and Goering wasn't as bad as Goebbels. I've heard this particular "moron" being interviewed on the radio and he wouldn't recognize the truth if it bit him on the arse. I'll be charitable Fraser, we're all entitled to one of our little aberrations and this sure is one of yours.
ACT
February 13th, 2008 10:39pm Report this commentFor what it's worth, it's also balls to claim that he has turned the ex-Eastwood into a 'safe' seat. Check out the last Holyrood election - this seat is the only one to have identical Holyrood/Westminster boundaries - and you'll see precisely why Jim Murphy is so worried about *losing* his seat back to the Tories at the next election. That factual correction apart, I agree he's one of the good guys. And he single-handedly proves that not everyone who emerged from Glasgow University debating is a self-satisfied blowhard.
Michael Greaves
February 14th, 2008 9:50am Report this commentA rather different view of this rather sinister chap can be found at : http://tinyurl.com/22j2cm
Bazza
February 14th, 2008 10:59am Report this commentTwo points on Jim Murphy ... 1) I seem to recall, prior to his election in 97, this ex-NUS bigwig slated the Tories for cutting student grants and introducing student loans, only to vote in favour of tuition fees being introduced within months of arriving at Westminster. Hardly the mark of a highly principled individual. 2) Eastwood/East Ren now a 'safe' Labour seat? I wouldn't bet on it. The Tories came within a few hundred votes of pinching it back at last May's Scottish Parliament elections. It's one of the biggest (in population terms) seats in Scotland, with a big influx of young, middle-class families to its sprawling new estates. I'd imagine they are classic swing voters who, if they feel they're paying too much tax for little return, could well plump for Cameron next time ... regardless of how assiduous Jim Murphy is in getting his mugshot in the local paper every week.
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