IAN Murray has been appointed as the new shadow Scottish secretary as part of Keir Starmer's Labour frontbench.

The role involves Edinburgh South MP Murray scrutinising the Scotland Office and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack.

Of course, you'd hope such scrutiny would be conducted by a figure who holds an ideally well-balanced viewpoint on Scotland and its people in order to adequately hold the Secretary to account.

Ian Murray's track record on his thoughts towards Scotland's future, however, is ... well, a little skewed, to say the least:

 

7. Ian Murray urges Labour to re-admit Aberdeen councillors

Nine Aberdeen Labour councillors were suspended back in 2017 after going into a Better Together coalition with the Conservatives.

But Murray has called for them to be allowed back into the party, stating that the issue has "dragged on for far too long" and that the group had "never stopped putting Labour values" into place in the local authority.

6. Ian Murray backs tactical voting for Tories to keep SNP out

Murray's support for the suspended coalition councillors may not seem too shocking when you consider that he himself also appeared to call for teamwork with the Conservatives in 2017.

Labour's campaign for the snap General Election kicked off with Murray telling The Guardian that he supported tactical voting to defeat the SNP, saying that that meant Tory and LibDem voters had to switch sides, too.

5. FACT CHECK: Ian Murray's claim about independent Scotland joining the EU

The MP's comment on Scotland requiring a fiscal deficit at 3% or below in order to rejoin the EU as an independent nation was checked out by The National's fact-checking service ... and was found to be wrong. 

4. Labour MP Ian Murray likens indy debate to discussing English high street

Labour's only Scottish MP took on the independence debate after criticising Norwich South MP Clive Lewis for telling The National about his views on a second indyref.

He responded by arguing that he wouldn’t get involved in a debate about the pedestrianisation of Norwich’s High Street.

3. Ian Murray denies hypocrisy over People's Vote campaigning

Despite opposing a second independence referendum, Ian Murray did insist on a second Brexit vote. 

Asked by BBC journalist Nick Eardley if he had considered his actions were hypocritical, he argued back that one of his main reasons for not believing that to be the case was that "the fuel that's creating the fire for the nationalist grievance for another independence referendum is Brexit", and so it had to be stopped.

2. This Ian Murray quote completely exposes his hypocrisy

And that wasn't the only time he was caught out - after John McDonnell said it was the party's position that they would not attempt to block a Scottish request for indyref2, he was back at it, frantically explaining why Scotland should be denied indyref2.

Mike Russell then pointed out that Murray had only earlier told the House of Commons on a People's Vote: "To paraphrase a former Secretary of State, a democracy that fails to be a democracy if the public are not allowed to change their mind. That is exactly what people have been doing."

1. Labour MP Ian Murray backs Lisa Nandy over Catalonia claims

Back in January, then-leadership hopeful Lisa Nandy suggested the UK should “look to Catalonia” for lessons on how to defeat “narrow, divisive nationalism” in Scotland - despite police violence against voters in Catalonia’s 2017 independence referendum.

When asked by Andrew Marr if he agreed with her comments, Murray replied that he “absolutely” did, going on to say that “the way to defeat nationalism in this country and to keep our UK together, because our UK matters, is to have a progressive, centre-left Labour government at Westminster.”

 

Day one in the new job; we'll soon see how much scrutiny goes on.

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