IN the wake of his recent appointment as Labour's branch manager in Scotland, you would probably expect Jim Murphy to have a few more pressing concerns than the parched thrapples of the nation's football fans.

 

After all, at a time when the latest ICM poll has just predicted a Scottish Labour bloodbath in May's general election, when Labour membership figures are now a fraction of the SNP's and when he still has the tricky issue of trying to establish himself as a political heavyweight when he doesn't actually have a seat in the country's legislature, fretting about football followers' libations should probably be nearer the bottom of his to-do list than the top.

But no, while the people's party ought to have been asking itself why so few people actually want to vote for them anymore, Murphy decided he would rather take up the cudgels on behalf of those put-upon fans who have been barred from quaffing anything stronger than Irn-Bru at matches since the alcohol ban was introduced in 1980 following a lurid riot at that year's Scottish Cup final between Celtic and Rangers.

Murphy stated his case to Tam Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove on a recent edition of Radio Scotland's Off the Ball. I suspect this might be remembered as a seminal moment in broadcasting history, when the programme hosts finally came up against someone even more desperate than them to establish populist credentials, but that's by the by. What was intriguing to my ears was the way Murphy chose to put his argument forward.

Blithely ignoring the fact that Police Scotland and domestic abuse campaigners are still resolutely opposed to any relaxation of the ban, Murphy focused instead on the fact that rugby supporters have been able to drink at Murrayfield since 2007, when restrictions were removed at the Edinburgh ground. "If you're middle class and want to go to the rugby, you can drink," spluttered Murphy indignantly.

It was a contemptible remark. As someone who was raised in the Borders, I bristle at the unthinking conflation of rugby and class, and my anger goes off the scale when a politician who ought to know better should make that connection to advance his personal agenda. For Murphy's information, average incomes in the Borders are among the lowest in the country, a situation, incidentally, that he did not improve one bit during his colonial governor stint as Secretary of State for Scotland.

Yet Murphy's words also demonstrated a crashing ignorance of Scotland's wider rugby landscape. Yes, there was a time when the sport might have seemed to be the preserve of the silver-spoon set, but those days have long gone. Of the Scotland team that started the autumn Test series against Argentina last month, only two players, Richie Gray and Al Dickinson, had spent any time in private education. The vast majority of those coming through now have emerged from the state sector.

Murphy's glib remark was also deeply insulting to the thousands of volunteers who beaver away at clubs across the country to make grassroots rugby happen. In my experience, very few of them would consider themselves middle class. In fact, very few of them would think about class at all, which is exactly how it should be in sport. In November, just as the Scotland rugby team was establishing its blue-collar credentials, the SPFL Young Player of the Month award was given to Dundee United's Charlie Telfer, a product of the fee-paying High School of Glasgow.

Of course, it is probably understandable that Murphy should have a hang-up about any activity involving egg-shaped projectiles, but his attempt to play the class card was a squalid ruse. It was transparently obvious that he was attempting to reconnect with a constituency of voters who might be more inclined to think well of his party if it focused on jobs, housing and the health service rather than their half-time refreshments.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with Murphy that there is a case for relaxing the 34-year-old ban on alcohol sales at football. Treat people like responsible, intelligent grown-ups and there is a good chance they will act appropriately. It is certainly worth a trial exercise.

But let's not have any of this nonsense about the lifting of restrictions at Murrayfield seven years ago being a sop to the middle classes. It had been shown time and again that rugby supporters could behave sensibly, that they did not need wide segregation strips and armies of stewards in the stands and that reports of domestic violence did not spike after big games.

"Football still has a distance to travel," said former justice minister Kenny MacAskill when he removed the Murrayfield ban in 2007. So too, you might say, has Jim Murphy.