Tagged with Jim Murphy

The polls provide clear evidence that Findlay can reach the parts Murphy can’t

SL2014It is true that Jim Murphy has a higher media profile than Neil Findlay, but rarely in a leadership election do we have such good evidence that one candidate in the running cannot win over the voters Labour needs whilst the other has the policies they support. This matters if Ed Miliband is to have a reasonable chance of forming a government and if Scottish Labour is to avoid a further drubbing in 2016.

We know that over a third of Labour supporters went with Yes in the referendum. According to Professor John Curtice, a poll from Lord Ashcroft has this figure at 37% with another poll from Opinium in the last week of the campaign showing it to be as high as 47%. As Curtice points out:

It is certainly the case that less well-off voters, that is the kind of people who might be thought to be Labour’s traditional constituency, were more likely to vote Yes than those in more comfortable circumstances.’

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This could be the last ditch for Labour in Scotland, and the answer isn’t Murphy

Sturgeon spechThis morning’s poll in the  the Daily Record sums up the problem Scottish Labour  faces whoever wins the leadership positions: SNP 46%, Labour 24%, Tories 17%, Lib Dem 6%, Others 8%. So what’s the answer?

Nicola Sturgeon in her first speech as SNP leader this weekend clearly sought to position the SNP to the left of Labour. Whilst we may argue that this is mere marketing rather than a genuine shift — she certainly lacks a costed economic plan to substantiate it — it will be the perception that counts in the elections Scotland faces in the next two years.

But the clincher is making support for a minority Labour government conditional on removing Trident nuclear weapons from Scotland and rethinking the “endless austerity that impoverishes our children“. Salmond had already predicted the SNP winning 30 seats at Westminster next May which would allow the party to become power brokers to prop up a minority Labour government and force through greater power for Holyrood. Sturgeon takes his threat to use that leverage and pushes it further to the left. Continue reading →

A tale of two Labour coups

Murphy, Alexanderand MilibandToday’s Times (£) reports last night’s reshuffle as having been to prevent a coup (later clarified to say a “backbench coup“). The BBC are trying to give the story legs. There certainly was concern about the possible actions of two right-wing backbenchers to further undermine Ed Miliband’s leadership, and the reshuffle was designed to strengthen the small band of those personally loyal to Ed within the shadow cabinet, but that isn’t the internal threat that Ed really needs to worry about.

There are in fact two coups that should worry him and party members. They are both the work of shifting alliances of leading but disloyal members of his shadow cabinet. Continue reading →

What radical exception can break Jim Murphy’s rule?

Murphy campaignWhat should we expect from the civil war in Scottish Labour? Some veterans of Labour’s last civil war, still haunted by the machiavellian menace of Blairism, see Jim Murphy’s leadership bid as part of a long-term plan to revive the right-wing of the Labour party. If/when Labour lose in 2015, brother Ed will resign and brother David (whose campaign for the Labour leadership was coordinated by Murphy) will fly back from the US to take his place as heir to Blair. After a few years in the Scottish wilderness Murphy will return to London in the name of Progress and become, say, foreign secretary – the last of the Scottish Raj, carrying with him a new centrist Scottish majority to join David Miliband’s ‘progressive alliance’. Continue reading →

Why Labour could do without Balls and chains

Balls as ball n chainEd Miliband is stuck. He wants to lead One Nation. But Scotland got close to going alone. That independence referendum in mid-September showed Labour voters in its heartland authorities in Glasgow wanted out nearly as much as the SNP. UKIP, while tearing the Conservative Party apart, gave Labour a fright in the Heywood and Middleton by-election coming within 600 votes of overturning a so-called solid Labour majority.

Four years on from his election as party leader, Miliband is still shackled with Ed Balls as his shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a man he did not want in the job when first elected. A man whom Miliband was reported to have wanted to reshuffle (£) after his 2014 Party Conference. However, as former Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan replied when asked what was the most difficult part of his job: “Events, dear boy, events”. When the reshuffle didn’t happen it was reported by Labour Uncut, that Miliband’s own leadership was unsettled by the Heywood and Middleton by-election close-shave. His cunning plan to move Balls, and replace him as shadow chancellor with his wife, Yvette Cooper, was reportedly shelved. Continue reading →