Shadow defence secretary says painful choices have to be accepted as he warns against 'populism' of opposing all cuts
Share 5
inShare1
Email 
Jim Murphy, pictured with Ed Miliband in Afghanistan last year, will accept £5bn of the government's defence cuts. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Eurosceptic Tories, who loathe the EU's Lisbon treaty, found it difficult to take aim at the man who ensured its ratification in parliament.
Jim Murphy, Labour's former Europe minister, has such a disarming manner that eurosceptics could barely lay a glove on him. Murphy also showed the skills which allowed him to capture one of the safest Tory seats in Scotland in 1997 when he advocated the passage of the treaty on the grounds of economic growth and jobs.
So Philip Hammond is likely to sit up in Washington, where he delivered a speech on the government's defence cuts, after the softly spoken Murphy launched a withering attack on the government's Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is what Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, told me of the SDSR, launched in October 2010:
The government's process has not survived the first contact with world events – the Arab spring, concerns about North Korea, heightened worries about Iran.
Murphy was scathing about the way in which the government scrapped the Nimrod surveillance aircraft, hinting that this has harmed Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent:
The government cut them up on live television. They treated probably the most expensive technically capable aircraft in our history like a second hand car. They just scrapped it and chopped it into pieces...Nimrod was the Rolls-Royce and it was treated like a second hand car sent to scrap. Nimrod was an important part of the nuclear deterrent because it gave you the ability to know which other submarines were in the water when you were deploying your nuclear submarines. When they left the west coast of Scotland you knew what was within a few hundred miles of them and what their unique signal would be.
The powerful image evoked by Murphy shows why he is one of Labour's most formidable communicators. But this is no ordinary rant from an opposition spokesman. Murphy's main message is that Labour now has to accept a significant proportion of the government's defence cuts.
Murphy thought the government was rash in the way it scrapped Nimrod and he would have done more to ensure that some of its capability was retained by refitting other aircraft with US technology. But he says Labour has to accept Nimrod has gone. The £2bn that will be saved over the next ten years from scrapping Nimrod is the largest defence saving that Labour will accept. In all Labour will accept £5bn of the government's defence cuts, Murphy has told me as Barack Obama announced $450bn cuts to the US defence budget. This figure will rise when Labour manages to work out precise figures on other cuts it will accept.
But there is a deeper point as Murphy follows the lead of Ed Balls who told the Independent last month that Labour would show it would "control public spending in a tough and disciplined way". Murphy says Labour must avoid the "populism" of opposing every spending cut:
It is important to be both credible and popular when it comes to defence investment and the economics of defence. There is a difference between populism and popularity. Credibility is the bridge away from populism and towards popularity. It is difficult to sustain popularity without genuine credibility. At a time on defence when the government is neither credible nor popular it is compulsory that Labour is both.
Murphy is talking about his defence brief, as he explains in an article for Progressonline. But there is a wider resonance for the Labour party which is embarking on an intense internal debate as David Cameron and George Osborne build up a commanding lead on the economy, according to the latest Guardian / ICM poll.
There is a case to be made against many of the cuts, according to Murphy. But this needs to be made from a "credible" position which can only be achieved if Labour shows it is willing to accept many of the cuts. This is the logical conclusion of agreeing that the fiscal deficit must be tackled.
The timing of Murphy's intervention is significant in domestic and international terms. On the domestic front it comes just as key Labour figures express doubts about the party's economic strategy. These concerns were highlighted in a pamphlet by Lord Mandelson's Policy Network think tank last month which criticised the "vagueness" of Labour's deficit reduction plans.
Murphy's intervention is also significant in international terms. It shows that Labour's approach to defence is within the Atlantic mainstream because Obama announced major cuts on Thursday. Philip Hammond was also in Washington explaining the cuts in Britain.
But Murphy will be hoping that his acceptance of some of the cuts will give him credibility in Washington for his other key message: that some of the cuts went too far. There are concerns in Washington about the scale of the British defence cuts. Murphy's description of the Rolls Royce Nimrod being turned into second hand scrap metal is likely to be noticed across the Atlantic.