The big beast in waiting?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Who’s Labour’s latest rising star? There’s a shortage of household names (for now) on the party’s front bench. The big beasts have left parliament or decamped to the back benches.

So who should we be looking to make the breakthrough and become the big beasts of the future? John Healey made his real breakthrough last year in the shadow cabinet election, finishing a surprise second. Sharp and widely admired Douglas Alexander is now shadow foreign secretary. Sadiq Khan and Yvette Cooper – both tipped for greatness – have been quieter in opposition than might have been suspected. But there’s one big beast in waiting who we’re starting to hear more from – Jim Murphy.

Appointed shadow defence secretary in October, Murphy (like Alexander) was given a plum role in Miliband’s new team despite having helped mastermind David Miliband’s leadership campaign. In this new role he has been one of the party’s most consistent media performers.

In recent months he has established himself as one of the new darlings of Progress and the Labour right. In the absence of James Purnell, and with the elder Miliband confining himself to foreign policy and the back benches (for now), many are pinning their hopes on the square-jawed Scotsman as a Labour leader of the future. However unlike Purnell or David Miliband, Murphy is still something of an unknown quantity for Labour’s left – and certainly doesn’t inspire the antipathy that those two former favourites of the right did in their heyday.

In recent weeks there have been calls for Murphy to take on an altogether different role. In the aftermath of Scottish Labour’s aberration and Iain Gray’s impending resignation, Labour insiders have begun to call for Murphy to be drafted as a “Stop Salmond” candidate. Despite his relative youth he is seen as enough of a “big-hitter” to take on the SNP and win. He’s also seen as the epitome of the Scottish Labour problem – a hugely talented politician based in Westminster, with the skills to be the biggest fish in the smaller pond of Holyrood. Drafting Murphy into the Scottish Parliament is unlikely, both logistically (the last thing Scottish Labour needs is a by-election followed by a leadership coronation) and politically (Murphy’s career prospects in Westminster are probably too promising for him to take a punt on Holyrood) – but that he is being spoken of in such terms is a sign of the future that could lie ahead of him.

Ed Miliband clearly has plenty of time (and trust) for Jim – despite Murphy’s backing for his brother – dispatching him to Scotland to run the leadership’s post-mortem on the recent elections. Today we hear that Murphy’s remit will include meetings with senior Obama aides on e-campaigning. As his to-do list lengthens his responsibility grows.

Respected, a strong media performer, popular with the right but not reviled by the left, thought of as a potential future leader and with the ear of Ed Miliband. Jim Murphy is one to watch. He’s the big beast in waiting…