Jim 'No Jobs' Murphy?
The Times reports on the latest poll carried out by the maverick Conservative peer, Lord Ashcroft, which suggests that the Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, will lose his formerly safe East Renfrewshire seat at the general election.
If so, the Labour leader will very quickly become 'no jobs' Murphy virtually overnight and the political establishment in Scotland will be rocked to its core.
Jim Murphy launched Scottish Labour’s manifesto in Glasgow yesterday Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
By Sam Coates, Lindsay McIntosh and Lucy Fisher - The Times
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, is set to lose his seat in the election, polling showed yesterday as it was claimed that he consulted lawyers about clinging on to the leadership.
A poll by Lord Ashcroft, the Conservative commentator, suggests the SNP tsunami will also sweep away Douglas Alexander, the party’s national election co-ordinator, and Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader.
Mr Murphy secured 51 per cent of the vote in his East Renfrewshire constituency in 2010, with a majority of 10,420 and decided to fight again believing it gave Labour the strongest chance of retaining the seat.
Yesterday he was trailing the SNP by nine percentage points, down from just one point behind in January. Mr Alexander is behind by 11 points in Paisley and Renfrewshire South, while Mr Kennedy trails by 15 points in Ross, Skye and Lochaber.
Mr Murphy, who was elected Scottish Labour leader in December, is understood to have commissioned legal advice over whether he can remain in post if he loses his seat. His office denied the claim last night. However, The Times understands that his team were advised that the rules are silent on the issue and it is therefore for the party’s national executive committee to decide.
The need to commission such advice reflects growing pessimism about Labour in Scotland and a nervousness that opponents would come after him if he was not an MP.
The Ashcroft poll suggested that the SNP were on course to win 55 of the 59 seats in Scotland. A Scottish Labour spokesman conceded that: “There is no gloss that can be put on these polls.”
Publishing his election manifesto yesterday, Mr Murphy painted the SNP and other smaller parties as an irrelevance and said that only Ed Miliband could defeat David Cameron. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, used the opposition leaders’ debate on Thursday to warn Mr Miliband that he would never be forgiven if he let the Conservatives back into Downing Street by refusing to do a deal with her party.
Mr Cameron seized on Mr Miliband’s failure to rule out some kind of post election co-operation. He tweeted: “Ed Miliband won’t rule out a vote-by-vote deal with the SNP so he can be PM. It would mean more borrowing and more taxes and you would pay.”
Mr Murphy said of an SNP deal: “I want to beat David Cameron at the ballot box, not [with] some shoddy back-room deal and there is only one way of doing that,” he said. “Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond and all the others can huff and puff all they want but only Labour is big enough, and only Labour is strong enough, to beat the Tories.”
Today Mr Miliband will announce that the next government will establish a special Home Office enforcement unit with more than 100 staff to root out the illegal exploitation that undercuts wages and conditions for local workers.
The new unit will bring together teams from the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and specialist police units with additional Home Office enforcement staff.
It will have powers to investigate abuse, and increase prosecutions and fines against bad employers and gangmasters who exploit workers.
