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Jim Murphy under pressure to confirm intentions for East Renfrewshire

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New Scottish Labour Leader, Jim Murphy, promised on taking office to make his political intentions known ‘in the New Year’ – in respect of whether or not he would stand in May 2015 as the Labour candidate for his Westminster Seat of East Renfrewshire.

It would  be fair to say that ‘in the New Year’ is technically pretty elastic but that those who heard the promise had expectations based on ‘by the end of January’ as a reasonably leisured interpretation.

But here we are in mid February, without a peep.

The newly declared SNP candidate for East Renfrewshire , Kirsten Oswald, is challenging Mr Murphy as to whether or  not he will stand in his constituency.

This is predictable political strategy and hands initiative to one of his possible opponents in a way which would have been avoidable had Mr Murphy been more timely in making his intentions known

His position is, though, not as anomalous as might seem. Mr Murphy is the declared candidate for the seat and, in the absence of any statement to the contrary, he will defend it in May.

Given that we are now in mid February and that Scottish Labour’s policy has generally been for early declaration of candidates to allow them to get to work in the constituencies, we feel that is is virtually certain that the Labour Leader will defend his Westminster seat. He is certain to hold it if he stands and his party has no option but to hold hard to its certain seats.

It would be late now to introduce a new candidate and to do so in a context where the SNP has declared its intention to savage Scottish Labour. This has always been a contradictory policy, seeing a Scottish left wing party try to cannibalise a nationwide left wing party rather than turning the focus of its intentions elsewhere. But this policy is far more about the pragmatism of power games in Scotland  than it is about any political dogma.

The Radical Independents and the Scottish Socialists did stout work for the SNP in the indy vote, delivering Glasgow, North Lanark and East Dunbartonshire as three of the four Yes majorities in the country in the referendum. They have since seen the nationalists steal their colours and reject the proposition of a Yes Alliance for the General Election.

Back in the English Civil War, after King Charles I had made a personal promise to the Earl of Stafford that no harm would come to him, the Earl got confirmation that the King had signed his death warrant. His response was ‘Put not your trust in Princes’, a mantra for life for the wise.

Alex Salmond led Scotland from the sanctuary of Westminster to which he is now known to have continued to hold access and to which he is anxious to return. He did so with a deputy in Holyrood who has now succeeded him. He resigned his Westminster seat when he had secured one in Holyrood.

There is no reason why Jim Murphy should not do the same, standing down after securing a Holyrood seat himself.

Murphy will be a lightning conductor in East Renfrewshire. The SNP will throw everything at the contest there, as even intent to unseat him will bring out-of-scale media coverage.

This will play to Murphy’s advantage, as lightning strikes [and eggs] galvanise him out of his normal laconic style and underline the quick mindedness of his performance capability under pressure.

He is likely to get more national television coverage  to his party’s advantage in defending against a noisy SNP challenge East Renfrewshire than he would get in not standing and simply turning up across a welter of Labour constituencies to support his candidates – and he will be doing that as well anyway.

The mistake has been to look indecisive by not taking the initiative and making an early declaration of the inevitable.


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