Settling old scores, there’s no grudge like a Labour grudge
Speymouth
Following the findings of an investigation into her evasion of tax on a property she purchased in Brighton and the ruling that she had broken the Ministerial Code, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Raynor jumped before she was pushed and resigned from the Labour government, prompting a major reshuffle by Keir Starmer when he only needed to replace his deputy. Cynics might wonder if Starmer carried out such a far ranging set of changes to those holding the top positions in his government in an effort to regain control of the media narrative, the press is now talking about those appointed to new positions and not about the stench of sleaze surrounding a government which promised a change from the dysfunction and corruption of the Tories it replaced, but which instead has chased after hard right votes with increasingly right wing populist policies which have only served to legitimise and embolden the far right and make the odious figure of Nigel Farage look like a prime minister in waiting.
One victim of Starmer’s reshuffle has been über-toady Ian Murray, the erstwhile Scotland Secretary, who has learned the hard way that divesting himself of the few principles he once possessed in order to fawn over Keir Starmer has done him no good at all. Starmer couldn’t even extend him the courtesy of sacking him in person, Murray found out in a phone call, which is at least one step up from being dumped by text. Murray only ever got the gig by default, by dint of being Scotland’s last Labour MP standing for so many years. His previous opposition to nuclear weapons always made him an uneasy fit with Starmer’s right wing project, for all that Murray was eager to recant his prior beliefs in order to ingratiate himself with his new master.
Starmer however, was not prepared to return the favour. Starmer’s view of his party colleagues is purely transactional to a sociopathic degree, as you might expect from a man so clearly lacking in emotional intelligence. Starmer has replaced Murray with Douglas Alexander, a man so oleaginous you could deep fry a mars bar in his gob. Alexander’s appointment as Scotland Secretary sums up the Labour party under Starmer, the replacement of a man who sold out his principles with a man who never had any to begin with. A man who was prepared to stab his own sister in the back in order to further his career is not a man who will stand up to Starmer in defence of Scotland’s interests, and that is precisely why Starmer picked him.
Even after unceremoniously getting sacked, Murray was still prepared to humiliate himself by writing an obsequious letter to his lord and master in Downing Street, no doubt with an eye on a future peerage. But reading between the lines of the pleasantries, this was a letter from a very angry man, although being Labour through and through, most of his anger was directed at the SNP. If he could possibly have got away with blaming John Swinney for his sacking, he would have. Murray was last seen heading back to Oppo suits for a refund on his Union Flag jaiket.
There are rumours that the real reason Murray so unceremoniously got his jotters was due to long standing animosity towards him from Anas Sarwar. Sarwar holds a grudge against Murray for Murray’s part in a plot with the hapless Jim Murphy to oust the even more hapless Johann Lamont – she of Scots aren’t genetically programmed to govern themselves fame – from the leadership of Labour in Holyrood. Sarwar was Lamont’s deputy at the time and her defenestration consigned him to the obscurity of the back benches. The thin skinned nepo-baby has never got over it. There’s no vindictiveness like Labour party vindictiveness. It has always been said that the only people Labour politicians hate more than the Tories are other Labour politicians.
Murray has been replaced by the same Douglas Alexander who was the Labour Party’s Chair of General Election Strategy in 2015 when Labour lost every single seat in Scotland except Ian Murray’s. He’s clearly not been chosen for his ability to do anything but massage the ego of his boss and his willingness to tell Starmer what he wants to hear. Wee Dougie has the highest sook up to punch down ratio of any Labour politician in Scotland, amongst a field of some very strong contenders for the title, he even out-nasties Blair McDougall, which is quite an achievement.
During the 2009 MP expenses scandal, Alexander was one of three Labour ministers who “quietly repaid more £50,000 in expenses”. It emerged that Wee Dougie had repaid more than £12,000 that he had previously claimed in expenses on his taxpayer-funded second home while also receiving income from a tenant at the same home. This represented double-funding for his second home and was against the expenses rules. Unlike Angela Raynor, it would not have entered Wee Dougie’s head to resign.
Alexander lost his seat in the 2015 Westminster general election to the SNP’s Mhairi Black, a woman who is orders of magnitude ahead of him in terms of ability and principle. Mhairi is missed as an MP, Alexander wasn’t. While out of Parliament he took a job as chair of the board of trustees for UNICEF UK only to find himself at the centre of bullying accusations made by three employees of the organisation. A report into the allegations cleared him of bullying, but found that his manner “did cause some discomfort and upset to the three employees”, although “when viewed objectively, it did not amount to bullying.”
But then you don’t need an independent inquiry to tell you that Dougie Alexander is an unpleasant wee nyaff. He fits right in with Starmer’s Labour party, along with his spiritual twin Michael Shanks.
So here we are, ten years on from the electoral rout that Labour suffered in Scotland and the party has demonstrated that it has learned the square root of hee haw. Douglas Alexander is Scotland Secretary again, a post he previously held under Tony Blair in 2006, lasting just over a year in the job before being replaced by the eminently forgettable Des Browne when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister. What could possibly go wrong?
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