The sound of laughter reverberates down the corridor outside Jim Murphy’s Westminster office. Inside, Murphy is sharing a series of bad jokes with Tristram Hunt, who is seeking inspiration to lighten a speech he is preparing to deliver. It’s the end of a gloomy January day and the atmosphere is relaxed and informal. One of the few adornments in the otherwise sparse office is a funny cartoon of Murphy, bedecked in the green and white stripes of his beloved Celtic Football Club. It’s not long before the conversation swings round to football, and even when we get down to discussing political reform the footballing metaphors continue thick and fast.

Yet, while Murphy is certainly known for enjoying a joke, the relaxed persona masks serious political convictions. Having won the formerly safe Conservative seat of East Renfrewshire in 1997 (a seat which he describes to me as ‘the most middle-class in Scotland’ where ‘for the first time ever I just got 50 per cent’ of the vote), he was propelled into parliament as Scotland’s youngest MP. The experience was a steep learning curve which Murphy seemed to take in his stride, steadily climbing the ministerial ranks to become secretary of state for Scotland in the last government and now shadow secretary of state for defence. During last year’s leadership contest he argued repeatedly that Labour should be proud to defend its record in government. Since then, Murphy has been outspoken about his frustration at the coalition’s success in undermining Labour’s economic credibility. He is clearly a man in a hurry, keen to see Labour move up through the gears into attack mode. Yet, when asked what success in the May 2011 local elections would look like for Labour, his answer is decidedly restrained.

‘Success is getting more seats than the other guys. We’ve got to prove that we’re back in business.’ Is that the limit of his ambition? What about places such as Sheffield, where Labour hopes for an authoritative win? He readily agrees that ‘we’ve got to take the argument to Nick Clegg’s own doorstep’ but he won’t be drawn on the specifics.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his chief concern is what is likely to happen in Scotland. ‘The biggest contest is Scotland, just because of its national significance, its multibillion pound budget. [But] the electoral system is … designed to prevent someone winning an outright majority.’ This raises the question of a coalition government, an interesting prospect given the options which may be open to Labour. A Labour coalition with the Conservatives in Scotland seems unrealistic, as does a coalition with the SNP. What, then, are the prospects for a Lib-Lab coalition at Holyrood? Murphy shifts in his seat with a smile, aware of the dangers of acknowledging this very real possibility.

‘The Lib Dems would love to go into coalition with Labour, I suspect, to prove that they’re not Tories.’ And Labour? When pushed, he notes that a coalition must logically be one option on the table. That prospect is tantalising in a national climate where the Labour party seems obsessed with Liberal Democrat-bashing at the expense of targeting the Tories.

Murphy, however, sees the distinction between attacking the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives as a question of timing. He argues that the time is ripe to target ‘the buyer’s remorse Lib Dems’ who wish they could undo their May 2010 votes and who are naturally attracted to Labour. ‘But longer term the best way of dealing with the Lib Dems is to focus on the Tories. I think that part of this is going after voters who are worried about CCTV and ASBOs, and that’s fine … but there’s another group of people who thought we didn’t go far enough in introducing more CCTV and being tougher on antisocial behaviour, and it’s that type of voter who I think is part of the jigsaw for getting us back into power.’ Murphy notes the risk that these voters will ‘culturally drift towards identifying themselves as Tories’.

Murphy does, however, draw an interesting analogy when discussing Clegg’s current travails. ‘He’s trying to be to Cameron what Tony Blair tried to be to George Bush [believing] “I can influence him, I can change him, I can reel him back in.” Now Blair had some success, not as much as he expected or wanted and not as much as the country perhaps would have wanted, but it was the right thing to do. But Nick Clegg is no Tony Blair … Blair had a bigger influence on Bush than Clegg’s having on Cameron.’

Nonetheless, the shadow of economic credibility looms large over any talk of a Labour fightback. Murphy’s exasperation with Labour’s past errors is clear: ‘We’ll now come up with a list of cuts that we support. If they’re good enough to be supported in 2011, we should have supported them in 2010 and … we could have gone to the electorate and said “now is not the time to make the cuts, but now is the time to identify some of the cuts. Vote for us and when the economy is stronger … here’s the list of cuts we would make”.’

He also clearly believes that the coalition’s trashing of Labour’s economic record has been both brutal and effective. ‘[W]e allowed the Tories and the Liberals to make the weather on this … I think we should, and Ed is doing this, acknowledge one major strategic mistake and error, which was the “cuts versus investment” mantra. It was a mantra, it wasn’t a policy, it wasn’t an economic argument, it was a political slogan.’ Instead of engaging in bashing Labour’s record, he would limit the post-mortem to this key point and move on. ‘Sincere contrition rather than serial confession is the way I would put it.’

But how does Murphy think Labour’s message will sell in swathes of the south where the party has haemorrhaged support since at least 2005? As Joan Ryan, Giles Radice and others have identified, many constituencies held by Labour in the early Blair years are now statistically safe Conservative seats. Meanwhile, Labour’s representation on local councils in the south is dismal. While Murphy doesn’t claim that the concerns of southern voters are wholly distinct from those in other areas of the country, he does identify a worrying cultural climate. ‘Sometimes among more aspirational voters we seem to be set against them. And I don’t think that’s true but … we’re on the cusp of it becoming counter-cultural to vote Labour. Too many people have the view that “Labour doesn’t care about people like me”, or “Labour doesn’t care about places like this”.’ Murphy’s warning has added significance given what has happened in Scotland where voting Tory has become counter-cultural and his own seat, once solidly Tory, is now safely Labour. The test for Labour politicians, he believes, is to define ‘who you are and what you are and whether you’re in any way connected to their emotion’.

Basing Labour’s politics on emotional connection would mark a significant change, yet there is every suggestion Ed Miliband favours that approach. The past few months have seen animated debate about how to rebuild Labour’s relationship with local communities. Throughout that period Murphy has been closely involved with the Movement for Change, the grassroots community organisation which grew out of the leadership contest and which Miliband has committed to supporting as part of his reform agenda. Murphy is keen to discuss the Movement’s potential and speaks with genuine passion about it as ‘an entirely different way of doing community politics inside the Labour party’. He is also wary of placing restrictions on what the Movement should be or might achieve. ‘The Labour party shouldn’t try and throttle it. [O]ur instinct is to say: “What is this? We don’t know what it is. We’re suspicious, we want to control it, influence it”.’ He sees the fluidity of community organising as one of its strengths and hints at a direct link between the Movement for Change and the rehabilitation of Labour’s political reputation. ‘People’s demands of politicians are at their highest when the standard of behaviour of some of us has been at its lowest … that means that stuff like the Movement for Change is even more important.’

Murphy is equally effusive about the chance to reform Labour’s internal processes. He is currently holding informal talks to devise assistance for ex-service personnel who want to stand as Labour candidates. He is also keen to increase the decision-making powers of young people within the party. Asked what this would look like in practice, he throws a fantasy gauntlet down in front of Labour’s young activists. ‘I would actually have more young people on the National Executive Committee. And I’d make a challenge to Young Labour and Labour Students … If they can double their membership then they can double their representation on the NEC.’

But what incentive do young people have to become more involved in Labour politics when trust in politicians is at an all-time low? Murphy is unfazed by concerns that the next generation will turn its back on the political process. ‘Politicians have become the poster boys and girls for the death of deference, and some of us have earned [a] place on that billboard. But my short answer is: believe in something, argue for it. For me, most of my domestic politics is about working-class parents having the chance to have middle-class children.’ Having been active in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, he can see the attraction of single-issue campaigns which leave the individual ‘uncompromised’. Yet he is polite but firm about the limitations of single-issue politics. ‘If you want to complain about the world, you can join a single-issue group. If you want to change the world, you join the Labour party.’ The line sounds romantic, but Murphy presents it as simply a fact of life which he accepted long ago. Despite his playful smile, the seriousness of his convictions is evident. Believe in something, and argue for it.

Photo: Steve Punter