Ian Murray: “People are ready for a fightback.”

“We’ve had different policy positions on a lot of things for a long time. My policy position personally on Trident has always been not to renew.” I spoke to Shadow Scotland Secretary Ian Murray on Friday, two days before the Scottish Labour conference voted to oppose Trident renewal, but his remark may settle a few nerves following today’s debate.

While the Trident vote does not mean Scottish Labour’s position has officially changed, with the reforms for greater autonomy being proposed by Kezia Dugdale, we could see plenty of issues where the policies of the UK and Scottish parties don’t match up. As the only Labour MP in Scotland, does Murray foresee problems for him when it comes to voting in Parliament?

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Of course there’ll have to be procedures and processes worked out of how you resolve these kind of issues.” He seems genuinely unperturbed by the possibility of being stuck in the middle of conflicting policy positions; the uncomfortable overlap in a Venn diagram of two incompatible circles.

Neither does he see the likelihood that the SNP will bring a Trident vote in the Commons later this month as a concern. “It’ll be the third time this year”, he shrugs. “If they [the SNP] genuinely wanted to hold the Tories to account they’d make their Opposition Day debate about the Human Rights Act or tax credits or the Trade Union Bill. But no, they want to do it about Trident. They did it on Trident in January, they did it on Trident in October.”

Will he vote in that debate? “Depends what the motion says. I didn’t vote in January ‘cause it was just them playing politics.”

The Parliament Trident debate is a clear move by the SNP to try and portray Labour as divided, and Murray believes that the the Nationalist’s penchant for politicking will come back to hurt them eventually.

“They are so hell-bent on destroying the Labour Party that it might backfire on them. A lot of our colleagues want to work with them to hold the Tories to account, but they’ve no interest in that whatsoever.”

Murray is obviously popular with the Scottish Labour grassroots. When he addressed conference on Friday, he received a hero’s welcome, and the speech went down a storm.

I thought it was interesting that he had devoted a passage to attacking Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, accusing her of thinking that “a cheery photo op can distract people from her policies”. In dark corners of boozy conference bars, some of the party’s grave-faced pessimists warn that finishing third behind the Tories in May is increasingly plausible.

Not so, says Murray. “The reason I focussed on Ruth Davidson is that she’s a Conservative and she completely supports Cameron and Osborne”, he contends. “She’s a Tory and she’s trying to cover up the fact that she is.”

He may be just the right man to be charged with sole responsibility for representing Scottish Labour in Westminster – he certainly seems to have his finger on the pulse of members, and not just on Trident. Murray’s enthusiastic at the coming party reforms, and sums up a common feeling in Perth when he tells me “the country’s been devolving at running pace ad the party’s been devolving at walking pace”. “This catches it up”, he tells me.

And while he is not blinkered about Labour’s prospects (“It’s going to be tough; we’re in a perfect cocktail of post-referendum politics, the nationalist agenda and a popular First Minister”), there is an undercurrent of optimism in everything he says, which is another common trait he shares with activists.

“People are ready for a fightback,” he claims, and the party is hunkered down for the length. “Kez has always said this will be long-term project.” But he believes that even the SNP’s success can give hope to Labour: “They’ve realised that in order for them to win an independence referendum in Scotland they have to position themselves on Labour territory.”

He’s a glass half-full man, Ian Murray. As the only Labour MP left one of our old heartlands, he has to be.