Murray: Labour must become a party for the entire UK

Ian Murray has launched his deputy leadership campaign with a stark warning that Labour must become a party for the entire UK. He said the party must care about every single region and nation, listening to voters in seats the party won, seats it lost, and seats it will never win.

If elected as deputy leader, Mr Murray will take responsibility for the party’s approach to how the UK should be governed in a post-Brexit Britain so that no city, town or community is left behind. He will present a report to the party’s September conference on how Labour can win again.

As well as setting out a vision for the country, he said the party must also address its own organisation, including its complaints procedure. If elected, Mr Murray will demand all outstanding complaints are placed on his desk on the Monday morning, and he will adopt a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism and all forms of racism, taking personal responsibility for the party’s approach.

At today’s campaign launch at the Wester Hailes school he attended as a child, Scotland’s only Labour MP said:

“We must reach out and listen to every corner of this country and every person in our country. Our party can only win by winning support across the whole of the United Kingdom, by building a coalition of all types of people with a variety of interests.

Let me be clear: I’ve never seen politics as an exercise in carving up different parts of the country, or different interest groups. Central to winning is building broad coalitions of people with different and varied interests.

The Labour Party must care about every single region and nation of this United Kingdom, and I will take responsibility for the party’s approach to how the UK should be governed in a post-Brexit Britain – so that no city, town or community is left behind.”

Mr Murray added:

“I’m embarrassed about the cancer of antisemitism in our party. As deputy leader I will ensure a zero-tolerance approach to bullying, harassment and antisemitism.

I will take personal responsibility for the grievance and complaints process, and I will be held responsible for enforcing that zero-tolerance approach.

Never again do I want any Jewish person to feel that they do not have a home in the Labour Party, that they can’t trust us to do the right thing, or that they feel our party would make the country a more dangerous place for them.

The Labour Party – that stood alongside Jewish people for generations – strayed from our historic values. And in many of the big fights over the past few years, the same has been true.

We should be proud of what the last Labour government achieved in power, and we must now look to the future and stand up for what we believe in – co-operation, solidarity, and working together.”

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3 thoughts on “Murray: Labour must become a party for the entire UK

  1. We are rapidly getting to the crux in the UK.
    No longer four countries in union, but one (a “Greater England” suggested Cameron’s constitutional experts).
    We have a government led by an English nationalist, who pursues a separatist agenda for his country because of some “exceptionalist” fantasy. He also thinks he has the right to deny Scots a right to self-determine their own future form of government.
    Now we have the Labour leadership campaign, apparently satisfied with Brexit, but who will also deny Scots the “Claim of Right” they once signed up to. But it goes further: services in Scotland are bombastically denigrated, with no attempt to evidence their claims (context or perspective). One candidate suggests the Madrid governments use of paramilitary police to attack people in the process of voting, had it right. Is she suggesting locking up the Scottish government, for the crime of democracy?

    All my life, a substantial part of Labour gave support and sympathy toward Irish unity. They had an “understanding” with the SDLP, a N Ireland nationalist party.
    Now Labour and Scottish Labour are antipathetic to Scotland, and the rights of Scots to self-determination. Sad stuff from the party of Keir Hardie.

  2. A zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism is fine – I assume this zero-tolerance approach will also apply to all other forms of racism. Just make sure that due process will be followed as it is not uncommon for supporters of the current Israeli state to accuse those who criticise Israel of being antisemitic or motivated by antiseminitism.

  3. Maybe Ian Murray wants to merge the Scottish section of the Labour Party with its counterparts in England and Wales to have one Labour Party will a UK wide manifesto for the whole UK?

    Unionist and proud…

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