Scotland’s sole remaining Labour MP has called on his party’s leadership contenders not to come north of the border and talk about Scottish issues without attempting to understand them first.

Launching his own campaign for Labour deputy leadership on Thursday morning, Ian Murray made the plea: “I say to all leadership and deputy leadership candidates, please don’t come up to Scotland and talk about things when you’re not quite sure what you’re talking about. Just make sure in the first instance that you at least try and understand.”

As the Scottish Labour leadership faces a torrent of complaints about the party’s equivocal position on both independence and Brexit, after its worst general election result of the modern era, Murray told an audience of activists at his old high school in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh: “Straddling those two constitutional issues means we don’t stand up for anything.”

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Taking a swipe at the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, who prompted a row between the Scottish and UK parties when he said Labour should allow Holyrood to stage a second independence referendum if MSPs voted for one, Murray added: “Let’s never again have a senior member of the Labour party coming to a fringe show at the Edinburgh festival and changing our constitutional position.”

Murray, who came second in the ballot of party MPs behind the strong favourite for deputy, Angela Rayner, told reporters: “I wouldn’t talk about anything that’s happening in Salford, where Rebecca Long-Bailey is the MP, or in Norwich, where Clive Lewis is the MP, without having spoken to them and being completely across the issues. So it’s not different to coming up to Scotland. Come and listen to the membership and the public, and if you can do that, you’ll have a much better formulation of the biggest issue in Scottish politics.”

Both Long-Bailey and Lewis, who has since pulled out of the leadership race, said that the party needs to accept the case for a second referendum, along with other senior Labour figures, including the former cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw and a number of defeated MPs. Murray himself remains opposed to the prospect.

Quick guide Labour leadership contenders Show Hide Rebecca Long-Bailey A close ally of the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, the Salford MP and shadow business secretary has been groomed as a potential leftwing contender for the top job. Pitch Promising to champion “progressive patriotism”.

Lisa Nandy The Wigan MP has built a reputation as a campaigner for her constituency and others like it, many of which have fallen to the Tories. A soft-left candidate, she resigned from the shadow cabinet in 2016 over Corbyn’s leadership and handling of the EU referendum. Pitch Wants to “bring Labour home” to voters that have abandoned the party in its traditional strongholds.



Keir Starmer Ambitious former director of public prosecutions has led the charge for remain in the shadow cabinet. He was instrumental in shifting Labour’s position towards backing a second referendum

Pitch Launched his campaign by highlighting how he has stood up for leftwing causes as a campaigning lawyer, and unveiled the slogan “Another Future is Possible”, arguing "Labour can win again if we make the moral case for socialism"





At the launch, Murray also pledged a zero-tolerance approach to “the cancer of antisemitism” within the party, and said that having a Scot as deputy leader “sends out the message that we care regardless of where you live”.

Promising to undertake a national listening exercise with disillusioned voters and to bring forward proposals on how to govern in post-Brexit Britain, Murray said: “The biggest problem in this is England, because Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have a devolution journey that is in train. So where does England go next? Merseyside, Manchester, London all have devolution to an extent. You might come out with federalism, but it’s also much wider voting systems, the House of Lords, how we get people on registers – it’s a big piece of work and nobody’s doing it.”

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Asked whether such proposals could include a federal model for the UK state, he said: “Scotland’s devolution journey is much further ahead than anywhere else, therefore how do we govern the rest of the UK in a post-Brexit environment? That’s the key question. Scotland is the trailblazer, but we have to get away from this binary viewpoint [of independence versus the status quo].”

Murray said he had already spoken to Jess Phillips and Keir Starmer about Scotland and also had plans to speak to Lisa Nandy.

Nandy has faced heavy criticism after her comments about the Catalan independence movement made during an interview with Andrew Neil on Wednesday, which some interpreted as an endorsement of the Spanish government’s repressive treatment of separatist leaders and their supporters.

Nandy told Neil: “We should look outwards to other countries where they’ve had to deal with divisive nationalism and seek to discover the lessons from when, in those brief moments in history in places like Catalonia and Quebec, we have managed to beat narrow, divisive nationalism with a social justice agenda.”

The Spanish supreme court has jailed nine Catalan separatist leaders for more than 100 years between them after violent clashes during the independence referendum in October 2017, which the Spanish state deemed illegal.

Asked about Nandy’s remarks during first minister’s questions on Thursday, Nicola Sturgeon said that she was going to “give her the benefit of the doubt” that she had not paid attention to what happened in Catalonia, but called on the leadership hopeful to clarify her remarks and apologise if necessary.

Nandy moved to address the criticism on her blog on Thursday, making clear that she condemned the violent approach taken by the rightwing Spanish government and was instead referring to the approach taken by socialists in Catalonia “peacefully resisting the advance of separatists there”.