Will Jim Murphy take on a Scottish Labour leadership role?

Jim Murphy was one of the stars of our LabourList conference rally on Sunday evening, impressing the crowd with a repartee honed on the streets of Scotland in the final months of the referendum campaign. In the past few weeks there have been rumours that Murphy (a former Scotland Secretary) might take on a more prominent leadership role within the Scottish Labour Party. Certainly his renewed prominence is something that the Scottish Labour Party could do with harnessing as it faces a difficult future.

One Shadow Cabinet Minister told Jim Pickard of the FT(£) that:

“The Miliband lot are desperate for Jim to take on the job up there, the question is whether he will do it.”

In a similar conversation, a senior Labour figure told me that “if Jim wants a big role in Scottish Labour, then they can’t turn him down – he was one of the few Labour people who came out of that campaign with a better reputation”.

Yet the FT reports that Murphy said earlier this week at conference:

“No, it’s not for me . . . I’m concentrating on winning the general election and becoming a member of Ed Miliband’s cabinet.”

Yet I still wouldn’t be surprised to see him take on a Scottish Labour role. And if he’s going to, it’ll happen in the next few weeks…