Tom Court looks at the campaign of Labour's only MP in Scotland for the Party's Deputy Leadership.

Scotland’s sole Labour Member of Parliament, Edinburgh South’s Ian Murray MP, has joined the race to become the Party’s next Deputy Leader. He has wasted no time in stating that Labour must now “become an alternative government of the future, not a protest movement of the past”.

From 1964 until 2015, the Labour Party were dominant in Scotland – at one point controlling 56 out of 72 seats between May 1997 and May 2005, and a further 41 out of 59 seats from the 2005 to the 2015 General Election. However, following a series of unsuccessful leaders, policies, and elections, the morning of 13 December 2019 left Ian Murray as the only Labour in Scotland, again - he was also Labour’s only Scottish MP in the aftermath of the 2015 General Election, which saw the all major three parties with only one MP apiece following the SNP wave.  

A long-term critic of Jeremy Corbyn (he resigned from the frontbench in 2016) who successfully defeated a deselection attempt during the last Parliament, Murray launched his campaign stating he would immediately undertake a review of the Labour Party to reaffirm its position both in Westminster and Scotland as a pro-EU and pro-UK party. He has expressed a desire to reconnect with “the communities that provided the backbone of the country in the past and feel left behind”, enabling them to become “the drivers of the future”, whilst also addressing the climate crisis and the skills that the UK’s changing workforce and young people require.

Murray has support from 34 Labour MPs, second only to frontrunner Angela Rayner MP. His supporters include Jess Philips MP, who recently pulled out of the leadership race. However, at the time of writing,  out of the 75 Constituency Labour Party (CLP) nominations to have been declared, Murray (6) is behind Angela Rayner (48), Dawn Butler (10) and Richard Burgon (7), which is the next hurdle he must overcome by reaching the 33 nominations needed in order to feature on the final ballot paper for members. 

Surprisingly, SNP activist and Scotsman journalist Helen Martin’s public support for Murray to stand not as Deputy Leader, but successor to Jeremy Corbyn. Writing in the Scottish paper, Martin states that Murray is “one of the best, most logical, brightest MPs in Labour” who “works for everyone, whether they’ve voted for him or not, because he sees that as his job, to represent all people”.

Murray was previously the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, and as the last remaining Labour MP in Scotland, will undoubtedly have the backing of many colleagues looking to rekindle relationships with ex-Labour voters north of the border. He is seen as one of the Party’s best placed candidates to heal the wounds caused by the last leadership and catastrophic positions on both Brexit and Scottish independence.