In theory, the Scotland Office has little relevance in a devolved country with a Nationalist administration. In theory, the post of Secretary of State for Scotland is an expensive anachronism. Indeed, so highly was it regarded by the New Labour hierarchy in London that it developed an unfortunate habit of being tacked on, as something of an afterthought, to sundry other portfolios.
So pivotal was it considered to the health and wellbeing of the modern United Kingdom that Tony Blair signed its political death warrant (along with the office of Lord Chancellor) until someone reminded him that neither prime ministerial whim was constitutionally legal.
That perspective altered 14 months ago when Des Browne’s dual mandate of Defence and Scotland met with an accident, and the Scottish post was decoupled and given to
Jim Murphy. It looked like a chalice heavily laced with poison.
A few months before, an erstwhile rock-solid Labour seat had fallen to the SNP, and Labour’s Holyrood leader, Wendy Alexander, resigned in the wake of a media firestorm over campaign funds. The party itself was lurching around trying to fit itself comfortably into a garment labelled opposition after two generations of a majority shareholding in power dressing.
That so much of that landscape has altered in the past year is down in no small part to the man who doesn’t only know how to kick shins as captain of the parliamentary soccer team. Before he even arrived in the Commons, he had been the subject of an early-day motion describing his activities as Scottish president of the NUS as intimidating and dictatorial – a result of the union endorsing the abolition of university grants.
Nor is he a man daunted by the odds. When he did plank his sparse frame on the Commons benches it was as the newly-minted MP for East Renfrewshire (formerly Eastwood), generally regarded as an impregnable Tory fastness. Since his re-arrival north of the border, the adjective ubiquitous seems slightly inadequate.
They didn’t quite inquire who that man was standing beside Jim Murphy as he clasped the pontiff’s hand in Rome the other day, but it’s a safe bet that the Scotland Secretary has racked up more column inches here than Pope Benedict of late. And it’s a safe bet, too, that the Scottish Government was less than thrilled to find Mr Murphy extending an official invitation to include Scotland in the upcoming papal visit.
But that vignette is emblematic of his style and also of the great irony at the heart of Labour politics in Scotland at the moment. For while Mr Murphy adroitly attaches himself to every passing bandwagon, blogging and twittering all the while, his Holyrood counterpart seems to have risen largely without trace.
Iain Gray took over the Labour leadership in the parliament just three weeks before Mr Murphy assumed his new role. But their public trajectories could hardly be more different. Amiable as he is in private, Mr Gray seems to lack both Mr Murphy’s ambition and political surefootedness; his jousts with
Alex Salmond always have the appearance of a catchweight contest – and not just in terms of the First Minister’s waistline.
More worryingly for Mr Gray, he often seems both over-shadowed and even outranked by a colleague whose pronouncements on matters devolutionary seem to resonate more loudly and widely than the comments of Labour’s team in the devolved parliament. You wonder idly what a Holyrood bout between Mr Salmond and Mr Murphy might have looked like in a parallel universe.
Meanwhile, let us pause in sympathy for those who ply their trade in the world of creativity in this land. I’m just about out of fingers here, but by my reckoning Fiona Hyslop will be the tenth Culture Minister in as many years and takes up the brief at eleventh hour before the legislation enabling Creative Scotland comes to parliament in early January. It’s a perennial sadness in politics that Culture always seem to be the one portfolio which gets passed around with impunity. It deserves better.
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