Interview: Ian Murray on the latest polls, pat leave and Labour ‘not aping Reform’

Scotland Secretary Ian Murray has said Labour’s immigration policy is “not about aping Reform”, in an exclusive interview with LabourList ahead of the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow.

In a wide-ranging interview, Murray discussed polling, paternity leave, oil and gas, his relationship with Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar, and some of the party’s biggest achievements in power to date.

Last weekend, The Sunday Times published a Norstat Poll which found that Labour was on course for its worst defeat in the Holyrood elections since devolution. According to the poll, just 18% of Scottish voters intended to back the party in 2026. Murray said the polling didn’t bear “any resemblance” to recent Scottish Labour by-election victories.

READ MORE: Delegates at Scottish Labour conference set to debate motions on winter fuel, Cass review, and others

“When you compare that poll, in particular, to actual votes in ballot boxes, it does not bear any resemblance. Two days before – in fact, it probably would have been the day after the data was taken in the field – we won the Kirkintilloch by-election. The SNP vote was down 16%; our vote was slightly up – in an area that is traditionally very, very strong, SNP.”

“Of course, polls are talked about, and of course you analyse them, and of course you look at where the problems might be. But we shouldn’t over-egg one poll at one moment in time.”

Reform

Poor polling isn’t the only headache Scottish Labour and UK Labour have in common. Last month, a Survation poll suggested Reform could win 15 seats in 2026, making it the fourth biggest party in Holyrood.

Starmer’s critics have claimed that the party’s stance on migration and asylum is shifting in response, but Murray is quick to dismiss any suggestion the party is taking a leaf out of Reform’s playbook.

“You know that phrase “stop the boats” became a totemic three word phrase in British politics, but actually behind that is lives that are being lost to the Channel, and organized criminal gangs and people smugglers that are exploiting vulnerable people.

“So that’s what we’re trying to tackle. It’s not about aping Reform – Reform will do what Reform has to do – but it’s about actually trying to deal with these deep-seated problems.”

READ MORE: Blue Labour ads, Blue Labour ideas: Inside the fightback against Reform

He said Labour’s migration stance reflects public opinion.

“The public are in varying degrees on a spectrum, concerned, curious, annoyed, about migration at the moment, and I think that would be wrong for the government, particularly with the policies that we’re trying to put in place from our manifesto on immigration, not to take cognisance of that.”

He said it was also important not to let the previous Tory government, and the current SNP government “off the hook”.

“There’s not one in six Scots in the waiting list because of migrants, it’s because of government policy. There’s not a housing crisis because of migrants, it’s a complete failure of public policy.”

Starmer and Sarwar

Scottish Labour MPs sit in a sometimes difficult, sometimes confusing middle ground between UK and Scottish Labour, taking the Westminster whip – and in Murray’s case, collective cabinet responsibility under Keir Starmer – but also answering in a less clear-cut way to Scottish Labour and its leader, Anas Sarwar.

One MP has said Scottish MPs answer to “both”, but Scottish Labour’s frequent divergence on thorny policy areas – like Palestine or winter fuel – and frequent SNP pressure on Sarwar to get his MPs behind him would appear to make this difficult. Sarwar told the Daily Record’s podcast earlier this week that he has “robust” conversations with the Prime Minister.

Yet Murray is adamant that he doesn’t have to “manage” their relationship.

“There’s nothing to be managed, that’s the bottom line to say. There’s lots of column inches written about the relationship between Scottish Labour and UK Labour, the historic relationship between Scottish leaders and UK leaders, but in this case, both personally and professionally, it’s probably the best it’s ever been.”

He said that the UK and Scottish Labour leaders might have different positions on different issues, but it is something that should be celebrated.

“We should celebrate the fact that devolution does give us that diversity, and does give the Scottish Labour leader, whoever that may be, and the UK Labour leader, whoever that may be, different positions on things because they need to deal with things in a different way.”

He said the point of devolution is to make things “different and more appropriate” for people in the devolved regions.

Fossil fuels

One area that has become a hotly contested topic in Scotland is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. A protest by Labour affiliate Unite is planned at the Scottish Labour conference this morning over what the trade union describes as the Grangemouth “catastrophe”. The refinery is set to close this summer with the loss of more than 400 jobs.

Asked about a conference motion proposed by the GMB union which calls for a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and continued new oil and gas exploration, Murray thanked the union – a major Labour backer – for “continuing to stand up for their members”.

“But look, this is happening anyway. I always reflect on the story that Offshore Oil and Gas renamed their entire organization to Offshore Energies UK, so they’ve already made that transition themselves in their own name.

“So the sector was always going to be declining, because it’s an ageing basin, and because of the competitiveness of the other places across the world that are exploring.”

He said the “bottom line” is that Scotland has to do both.

“It’s not either or. I think this debate tends to be around either or, you’re either going to drill for oil or you’re going to go for renewables. Actually you do have to do both – there’s no hard stop on one and hard start on the other.

“It’s going to be a gradual transition from one to the other, and it will cross over at some point. The challenge is to make sure that you get that done as quickly as possible.”

The Cass review

Another motion at the conference covers the Cass review. It calls for Labour to back the withdrawal of Scottish Government Guidance covering the affirmation of transgender young people in schools. Asked if children should be able to self-identify as a different gender, he said “the law is there already for people to see”.

“I mean, we’ve had this big debate this week because of the employment tribunal that’s happening in NHS Fife. And the reason we have that debate, and the reason there’s a big employment tribunal, is because the Scottish government have made a complete mess – as they do with most things – of pieces of legislation.”

Giving a medical analogy, he continued: “Let’s syringe the policy of this discussion and talk about actually, where governments mess up – and they just completely messed up.

“That means it’s not serving any community. It’s not served the women who have been campaigning for their rights to be upheld, and it’s not served the trans community who are looking for their rights to be upheld as well.”

He said the SNP has left “an almighty mess behind”.

“And we’ve been quite clear that section 35 will stay in place on the gender recognition act because of its implications and because of the court case, and therefore the balls in the court of the Scottish government to sort this out.”

Paternity leave

Earlier this month Murray became the first cabinet minister to take paternity leave. He said it was a “fantastic” experience, adding he’d recommend it to anybody as a chance to just enjoy fatherhood and “switch off”.

“The big high was the fact there was no pressure to do anything, and work essentially stopped. I kept a couple of things on,I wanted to see through a couple of big issues that were hanging around at the time.

“The real low is just the complete lack of sleep. It’s not necessarily tiredness, you’re just not functioning full pelt, and you just know that. So it’s just not being completely on it that’s part of the problem.”

Stability with Labour

As our interview wrapped up, Murray said Labour has brought “stability” after years of Tory chaos. He cited the work the government has done on renters’ reform, NHS appointments, and renationalising the railways as some of Labour’s achievements. He said the public is “rightly” impatient, and has a short memory of the way it was before.

“But if you think about just two years ago, politics was absolutely, utterly chaotic, and it was the public that paid for that chaos.

“We’ve now got stability in Parliament. We’ve got stability in government, probably one of the only democracies in the world that has a stable government at the moment.

“And therefore we should be building on that and making sure that we can get these things across the line.

“But are we getting enough credit for this stuff? Probably not, but that’s ours to sort.”

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