Triangulator extraordinary and plenipotentiary

Alea jacta est. Labour’s Scottish Branch Office has chosen Jim Murphy to lead it, and he in turn has chosen his strategy: Triangulation.

It’s already abundantly clear that Murphy intends to steal the SNP’s clothes (or at least the most popular garments), in exactly the same way that Tony Blair used triangulation (or the Third Way) to marginalise and confuse the Tories in the late 1990s. Murphy’s claim in his victory speech that “the prize is a fairer country” is clearly based on the Sunday Herald’s main reasons for supporting a Yes: “the prize is a better country”. Indeed, ever since his election he seems to have focused on saying everything the Labour-SNP swing voters would want to hear.

As I argued recently, Labour’s problems in Scotland to a large extent have been caused by insisting on triangulating only against the Tories, making it ridiculously easy for the SNP to outmanoeuvre them in Scotland.

Jim Murphy seems to have decided to focus solely on the SNP, which makes him much more dangerous for the SNP, but will UK Labour put up with it? Has Murphy really been given free rein to beat the SNP, even if it means having dramatically different policies north and south of the border? Or will he like Wendy Alexander before him be forced into a humiliating climbdown at some point?

I fully expect Jim Murphy to sound almost like a Nationalist from now on — all his previous views will be youthful errors of judgment or something like that. He’ll promise just about anything that would be popular with voters — he knows that there’s no way he’ll get an absolutely majority in 2016, so even if Labour wins, he can blame his coalition partner for any divergences from his promises.

Where Jim Murphy will necessarily be weak will be with regard to reserved policy areas. If for instance UK Labour continues to be in favour of austerity, he can’t be against it while promising to toe the UK line at Westminster. If he decides to go against the UK line, will he force Labour’s Scottish MPs to follow him or Ed Miliband? And if he doesn’t, the SNP will quickly exploit that there are triangulation-free zones that can be used to differentiate themselves from Labour.

I don’t think many people expected Jim Murphy to change his political views so comprehensively. In the short term it’ll make things much harder for the SNP — he won’t simply repeat London’s anti-Tory slogans mindlessly. However, the history of Tony Blair’s premiership has demonstrated that eventually voters will see through triangulated policies, so in the longer term voters will realise that Jim Murphy never wears his own clothes, but always the opponent’s.