Jim Murphy: My biggest regret was being sidelined by a tribal party

FORMER Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy has admitted that his greatest regret was to allow himself to be excluded from Labour’s Holyrood election campaign this year, implying that the result may have been different if he had played a leading campaign role.

Speaking to The Scotsman ahead of this year’s Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Mr Murphy, now shadow defence secretary, claimed that Labour had failed to be “one team” since devolution, and the culture of “tribalism” with MPs, MSPs and councillors split into their own groups had to end.

Mr Murphy also insisted that he would not consider being Scottish leader for 20 years despite pressure on him to run for the job now in what is widely seen as a weak field.

But the man charged with leading the review of the party after the catastrophic defeat by the SNP in May said that the most difficult task for the party was to change its culture and work together.

“The cultural stuff is much harder than the constitutional stuff,” he said. “People are absolutely fascinated by the constitutional stuff but we are not going to win an election or lose an election because of the plumbing of a political party.”

And he addressed why he had failed to take a leading role in the 2011 campaign after his success in 2010 when Labour won 41 of the 59 Westminster seats when he fronted the campaign.

“I sat out the last year of Scottish politics and I regret doing that. It was an example of the mistake we made in early devolution where we set up the parliament and we backed off.”

Many close to him have said that the Holyrood party insisted he stayed away so it could run the campaign itself. When this was put to him Mr Murphy grimaced and hesitated.

“Let’s say it was mutually agreed that that was the best thing to do,” he said. “It happened. It won’t happen again.” And while he made it clear Scottish Labour could make its own policy on devolved issues, MSPs would never be left alone again to run their own campaign.

“What we are trying to do through these reforms is rather than have these three tribes – Labour MPs, Labour MSPs and Labour councillors – we want to create one team out of the three tribes and we haven’t been one team since devolution.

“We haven’t always been on the same side 100 per cent since devolution. Now that’s changed. The public changed it for us, we should have changed it ourselves. The public said ‘get yourself together, sort yourself out’.”

He added that MPs made a mistake in “stepping back and saying [to MSPs] you get on with it” after creating devolution.

“I think that after devolution having made a success at creating devolution we made some mistakes and one of the mistakes was giving the impression that we didn’t take it seriously enough,” he said.

But he insisted that there was no problem with the ambitious more talented members of the party in Scotland wanting to come down to Westminster.

Although he added: “The Lab-our party is not a command control organisation. We can’t move people around and tell them what to do. People make their choices based on what they want to do.”

And on his own future he said he might consider being Scottish leader in 20 years’ time, but not now.

“I’ve got a job, I want to be defence secretary. That’s the short answer. There’s no complicated response to it,” he said.

“I’ve got a job and I want to help elect a British Labour government. There’s other people with different jobs.”

He added: “I was elected before devolution. I Donald [Dewar] and Henry [McLeish] and a couple of others might have done it. Personally I’m not a fan of chopping and changing.”

When it was pointed out that was what SNP First Minister Alex Salmond did, he joked: “Of course, whatever happened to him? Well 20 years time maybe.”

Instead he is backing Eastwood MSP Ken Macintosh for the job.

He issued a warning against those who want the UK government to hold an independence referendum and not wait for the SNP to organise one in Holyrood and he said the fight against the SNP should be led from Scotland.

“Whatever happens it has to come from Scotland. If Scotland says get on with it then that’s what the Nats should do. They can’t hold off permanently in the hope that at some point in the distant future they believe they would have a chance of winning it.

“But whoever calls it, it can’t be forced upon Scotland. As far as I can tell most people say let’s have it. As someone once said: ‘Bring it on’. Bring it on seems to be the sentiment of Scotland.”

He said that he would not share a platform with David Cameron or other Tories because they represent “different values” even if they want the same outcome. But he said that the value which will win the referendum is “patriotism against nationalism”.

“Patriotism is a love of Scotland. There’s nowhere better but there’s something bigger. It’s an appeal to people’s soul and sentiment.”

He said that Britishness only played a small part. “We need to be where most Scots are – Scottish first, British second.”

And he suggested that the campaign should be fronted by non-politicians. “I think one of the important things is that it can’t be the politicians telling the public. We have had enough of those campaigns.

“There needs to be people outside party politics, recognised senior people that the public trust should be at the top table of the campaign.”