Meet the minister for selling the unsellable
Fraser Nelson warms to Jim Murphy, the Minister for Europe, who is steering the Lisbon Treaty through parliament — and now promises that he would help Blair become EU President Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first tip for stardom. Throughout his twenties, Jim Murphy suffered this affliction. Before Tony Blair led the Labour party he was starting a Blairite revolution in the National Union of Students. His slogan, ‘realism, not revolution’, made a cover story in the Sunday Times magazine. No list of young talent in the mid-1990s was complete without him. Yet only now, 11 years after his election to parliament, has he reappeared on the national radar.
The 40-year-old minister I meet in the vast Foreign Office room is a lot quieter and more bashful than the student firebrand I once saw shouting down far-left activists in Glasgow. As I walk in he jumps out of his seat and makes me a cup of tea, chatting non-stop. He asks about Alex Salmond — why does he get good press? Do I think the Tories still lack hunger? It feels almost antisocial producing my notebook. But if I were him, I’d want to talk about anything but his job: pushing the Lisbon Treaty through parliament.
As Europe Minister, I ask, doesn’t he have the worst job in government? He must drive through a treaty which the public do not want, and do not believe is any different to the old constitution on which they were promised a referendum. ‘My job,’ he says, slowly, ‘is to repeatedly try to explain and discuss how it is different in substance and consequence from the old constitution.’ A tough task, I say, given the long list of European leaders saying the two documents are substantially the same.
‘The building blocks of your argument aren’t very strong in that the rest of Europe hasn’t said it’s the same,’ he says. I quote Bertie Ahern and Angela Merkel, but he stops me. ‘There are quotes from every leader in Europe saying the Treaty is different to the constitution. There just are. Sure, we can trade quotes at each other — the Prime Minister of Luxembourg says this, someone in Slovenia says that.’ But what about the House of Commons European scrutiny committee — surely what it says must be taken seriously? ‘Of course, but it said the Treaty is substantially the same for those countries who have not secured the optouts which Britain has. We have a unique deal.’ He is technically correct, but the committee went on to say it was ‘not convinced’ that the UK version of the Treaty wasn’t ‘substantially the same’. Mr Murphy knows the arguments against this Treaty, and knows how to fight them: drag your opponent down into minutiae. I could swear I detected a smile when he used phrases like ‘third pillar’ and ‘Schengen aspects of justice’ as if he was daring me to put them into this piece and see how many readers I would lose.
But surely, I ask, he accepts widespread hostility to the Treaty. For example, he recent ly explained his case on a video posted on a Labour party website. ‘Ask a question,’ it says — and underneath are comments from the public with questions like ‘Is this legal?’ and ‘How can you look at yourself in the mirror?’ alongside phrases such as ‘mealy-mouth spin’, ‘running scared’, ‘total breach of faith’, ‘blatant lies’ and worse.
He gives a resigned sigh. ‘The first email I received in this job said: “Congratulations on your appointment. I’ve watched the careers of all of your predecessors and I am certain you will die a lonely death and be buried in a traitor’s grave.”’ Was it from Frank Field? I ask. He just laughs. ‘I’m relaxed about personal insults. It’s the way it is. I grew up in a Glasgow housing estate. I can take it.’ Now we’re getting to it. Mr Murphy is the son of a plumber and a dinner lady, who grew up in a deprived estate boarding his wealthy constituency of East Renfrewshire. Being ‘poor in Glasgow’ politicised him, he says — along with ‘being white in South Africa’, where he lived as a child when his unemployed father went looking for work. When he stood in 1997 he expected defeat — and a safer seat next time.
Instead he took what was once the safest Tory seat in Scotland. It was a shock which, he said, left his wife ‘close to tears — and not tears of joy’. His first mission was to preserve his seat by what he calls ‘retail politics’ — supermarket surgeries, pressing flesh in railway stations and spurning Westminster. His tactics became, literally, a textbook case of campaigning. By the next election, he had made it one of the safest Labour seats in Scotland.
And this is what Jim Murphy does: sells the unsellable. First he sold Blairite reform to the NUS, then Labour to the Tories of East Renfrewshire and now the Lisbon Treaty to the public. ‘The reason why I was made Europe Minister is because I am a realist. I don’t come here with any great baggage or emotional attachment to Europe always being right — far from it. But I think that, if Europe can work more effectively, people’s perceptions will change.’ Might people’s perceptions change for the better if Tony Blair would stand to be European Union President? ‘He’s a big character with international recognition. I haven’t spoken to him to know if he definitely wants it. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg fancies it.’ But would he actually back Mr Blair? So far, Mr Brown has been cagey about this. ‘If he did want to do the job, I think he would be great at it and I would be interested in helping him make it happen.’ So, finally, a ‘yes’ from London.
I ask how he’s spending the half-term recess: constituency work. ‘I’m going back to my old school, where 42 per cent of the pupils are now Polish. Next year the majority will be Polish.’ But doesn’t this just sum up Labour’s failure, I ask, that one in four men in Glasgow is living off benefits and yet so many immigrants find work so easily? It is like lighting a tinderbox. He reels off facts, figures and explanations: the complexity of the problem and why he believes Labour is working.
We’re soon into the 40th of my allocated 30 minutes, and he has batted away two civil servants who say his next visitor has arrived. He is no longer welfare reform minister (his last job under Blair), but is almost evangelistic about settling my doubts about Labour’s record on poverty. A third civil servant comes in, and shoots him a steely glance. ‘One minute,’ he says, unconvincingly.
When I finally leave his office, a wall of officials are looking murderously at me. The visitor we had kept waiting is Fiona Gordon, political secretary to the Prime Minister. Mr Murphy blanches. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise it was you,’ he said. She pretends not to mind. I make for the exit. ‘OK, Fraser, hope that you got all I said about Gordon,’ he says, with a wink. In fact, he didn’t mention the Prime Minister once. Given that his job is to take all the flak over Europe, that’s probably just as well.
A longer version of this interview is published on www.spectator.co.uk.
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