ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well in Thursday’s local elections Labour secured 29% of the vote, lower than its share in the last general election when Gordon Brown was leader. So are the headlines about UKIP and the Conservatives actually hiding a big problem also for Labour? Well in a moment we’ll be hearing from the Shadow Defence Secretary, Jim Murphy. Well let’s say a very good morning to Jim Murphy who joins me now from Glasgow. Mr Murphy, on UKIP first of all, you must disagree I would suspect on almost their entire policy offering. Are they clowns?

JIM MURPHY: No, and I think insulting a party is basically insulting their voters. It might sound like a smart Westminster insult but it backfires on any party that does that sort of thing so the Conservatives were sort of cack-handed in the way in which they handled the threat of UKIP and they only inflated the vote for UKIP in the way in which they had a real go at them, as if insulting the voters and saying ‘How dare you be so stupid to vote for UKIP, don’t you realise they’re wrong in all sorts of areas?’, insulting them in that way did no good whatsoever except to help UKIP which I don't think was the Conservative party’s intention but it was certainly the outcome of their kind of ridiculous insults.

DM: Okay, so how does Labour counter the threat? As I say, you disagree with so many of their policies and perhaps the most significant electoral event of last week was South Shields, rock solid Labour yet UKIP finished second.

JM: UKIP managed to beat the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, the Lib Dems managed to beat the Monster Raving Loony party by a couple of votes into seventh place so it was a remarkable by-election. But on UKIP, I think David Cameron is frozen in the UKIP headlights, he doesn’t know which way to turn and he seems in some ways paralysed politically by the UKIP threat. I think what seems likely is that they are going to chase after UKIP votes a way out there on the right when everyone knows that elections are won on the centre ground. What seems to be a Conservative tactical instinct to chase after UKIP on the right is a strategic mistake because it’ll leave the centre ground open for Labour, a moderate, sensible, pragmatic engagement in Europe and a way of getting the economy going again. In terms of how Labour responds, because that’s the question you asked, if you look at UKIP voters they are not fruitcakes, they’re not clowns – some of the people who stood for them are colourful and controversial of course but the voters are frustrated, they’re angry. They look at the government and say they are not providing the answers and it is frustrated by the political system. There’s that democratic disconnection that many UKIP voters feel, they are angry about the economy, they’re angry about welfare and they’re worried about jobs and the cost of living so for us, for the Labour party, the areas of UKIP policy that are closest to us would be people’s anxiety about jobs and people who voted for UKIP were more worried about jobs and welfare than they are actually about Europe, which is a surprise to many but nevertheless the polling suggests that.

DM: I just wanted to ask you about that centre ground comment you made there because that almost echoed in my judgement with what Mr Blair said a couple of weeks ago and he seemed to be slapped down in quarters of your party but Tony Blair saying exactly as you said there, the centre ground is where you’ve got to be and if that UKIP performance showed anything, it shows there is a large right wing tendency there and Labour should certainly not move to the left.

JM: Well that’s not what we’re doing, that’s where we’re camped politically and that sensible mainstream majority of people who think if they work hard they should get on in life, if they abide by the rules they should get on in life. Now when you look at the election results for Labour, I don't think the election results in advance, people were saying Labour can’t win in the south, Labour can’t reach the parts of the country that Tony Blair reached – well we won seats in Hastings, we won seats in Lincoln, we won seats in Ipswich, in Norwich, in Crawley and all sorts of other places, some of which we hadn’t won since way back in 1993. So those were really important results and in some of the constituencies we really have to win if we are going to form a government again. So yes, we have still got some work to do but those were really strong results for the Labour party, that’s been missed I think amongst all the conversation, understandably, about the surge in UKIP.

DM: I want to throw it forward, one of the issues that’s being discussed in terms of the government’s, the Conservative’s response to UKIP, we’re hearing perhaps in the Queen’s Speech there won’t be this issue of enshrining in law, in legislation, the UK giving 0.7% of its gross national income to overseas aid. That would be very popular with a lot of UKIP voters, a lot of Conservative voters too. Is it something that Labour does want to see enshrined in law though?

JM: We do want to see that enshrined in law. I think when so many people are hurting at home, of course the big priority is in looking after and supporting our own people who are struggling, those who are desperate for work, those who find it hard to meet the costs of their fuel and food bill but we also have a responsibility beyond our own borders and it isn’t just a sense of let’s do the right thing and let’s do the charitable thing, it’s often in our own self-interest. Look at many of the countries where they are most unstable, those are the countries where Al Qaeda and terrorism can flourish so it is really important that we can get some sort of stability and economic growth in some of those countries and UK aid policy helps make that happen. I think it would be a real mistake for the Conservative party to respond in this sort of way but I say again, if the Conservative party want to gallop off into the right in the search of UKIP votes when UKIP voters, many of them, are worried about everyday normal cost of living issues, then that’s fine. I don't think the response to UKIP for any of the political parties should be ideological, it should be practical. What are the concerns and what are the answers to those concerns and significant amongst that is we were going round the country campaigning and Ed Miliband was out and about on a soapbox all over the country, was the issue of jobs, how do you stop so many young people being long-term unemployed? You only get one chance of being young and those months and years that you are stuck on the dole rather than work can set you back and you could maybe have a job, paying taxes, saving for a small car, maybe even a deposit for a small first home and all your friends are doing that, if you are stuck on the dole it is such a traumatic impact. Those are the sorts of things that the Labour party with its guaranteed job programme is so important and that’s would be our response to the issues, not just of UKIP but the general of sense of disconnection at the moment.

DM: Mr Murphy, you will understand it is live television and we have a limited amount of time and I know you want to talk about foreign affairs as well and we do too, so just to fit it in, about Afghanistan, what’s going on there. The Americans we know have lost 19 people in the last seven days, UK forces had three sad fatalities, is it getting any better there?

JM: I think in a general sense it is getting better, it’s not good enough yet and what we’ve seen over the past few days is an upsurge in the fighting season again. What we have to do is get those Afghan forces capable of taking on those insurgent elements, the Taliban elements, so that they can do the vast majority of the fighting. Now that’s the effort the international community is involved in but the worry is, having a timetable for withdrawal isn’t the same as having a plan for the peace afterwards so a greater emphasis on getting those Afghan forces up to scratch and reducing the number of people who join the forces and then leave quite quickly because they are not staying long enough and, really importantly, cracking down further on these insider attacks where Afghan forces turn their guns on UK, US and other international forces.

DM: And just lastly on the issue of Syria, it seems we have heard today what could be another strike by the Israelis. Do you think they are free to do that if they judge that their national interests are being threatened and is it a positive development?

JM: We don’t know whether this was of course an Israeli strike, there is a huge amount of speculation of course that it was and Israel has been clear that if there are arms bound for what they believe to be Hezbollah on their border then they would take action but none of this is a positive development. It adds more energy to the violence that’s there and when it comes to Syria there doesn’t seem to be any good choices, there are a selection of bad options. What we need to do in the immediate term is get UN inspectors in to investigate these allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. I know international politics is often, discussions take place in the shadow of Iraq but this is different. In Iraq it was a question as to whether did Saddam Hussein have chemical weapons, everyone accepts that Syria has these weapons. The issue isn’t whether they have them, the issue is whether they’re using them. If they are using them this would have very grave concerns and there would be an expectation for the United Nations to act and act decisively if that happens.

DM: Mr Murphy, thank you very much indeed for your time. We did get it all in, in the end and thank you very much for dealing with that errant earpiece as well. Jim Murphy there.