The necessary case for Ian Murray as Labour’s deputy leader

Ian Murray is standing for a post last won by a Scot 88 years ago. Since its creation in 1922, the deputy leadership of the Labour Party has been filled by five Londoners, four Welshmen, three Yorkshiremen, two Lancastrians, one Cumbrian, one Plymothian and William Graham, the solitary Scot. Graham was also an Edinburgh MP, though having died in office after just four months, he may not be Murray’s desired role model.

The case for ending nine decades of Scottish exile from Labour’s number two position seems particularly strong in light of the General Election. Murray was left, as he was in 2015, the only Labour MP in Scotland; his colleagues swept away in another SNP yellow wave. If the party work to do winning back the northern and Midlands working class voters, who switched to the Tories in December, it is nothing compared to the feats required to return Scots under the red flag’s folds.