WEB EXCLUSIVE: Meet the minister for selling the unsellable - uncut

26 January 2008

An extended version of Fraser Nelson's interview with Jim Murphy

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first tip for stardom. Throughout his twenties, Jim Murphy suffered this affliction. Before Tony Blair led the Labour party he was starting a Blairite revolution in the National Union of Students. His slogan, ‘realism, not revolution,’ made a cover story in the Sunday Times magazine. No list of young talent in the mid-1990s was complete without him. Yet only now, 11 years after his election, is he beginning to blip on the national radar.

The 40-year-old minister I meet in the vast Foreign Office room is a lot quieter and more bashful than the student firebrand I once saw shouting down far-left activists in Glasgow. As I walk in he jumps out of his seat and makes me a cup of tea, chatting non-stop. He asks about Alex Salmond — why does he get good press? Do I think the Tories still lack hunger? It feels almost anti-social producing my notebook. But if I were him, I’d want to talk about anything but his job: pushing the hated Lisbon Treaty through parliament.