Ian Murray: My wife was ‘absolutely f**king furious’ about sacking from Scotland Office

Ian Murray’s wife was “absolutely fucking furious” when he was sacked as Secretary of State for Scotland.

And the Labour MP said he still has not had any explanation as to why he was removed from the top job in the Scotland Office.

Murray was sacked from the Cabinet in early September amid the reshuffle sparked by Angela Rayner’s resignation as deputy prime minister. Douglas Alexander was made Scottish secretary.

However, Murray was invited to rejoin government the following day as a junior minister in the departments for culture and science.

In an exclusive interview with Holyrood, the MP admitted that he assumed the call from Number 10 was an offer of promotion.

While the news that he was instead to be removed from office was a blow, it was his wife, Mariam, who reacted more angrily.

He said: “It’s fair to say that Mariam was absolutely fucking furious… She thought I was massively underappreciated, because she’s seen it from her side about how much I was balancing family life, parliament, being one of the new 37 Scottish MPs, being in government, the travelling up and down, not just in the constituency, but also around Scotland, and all the rest of it. But she was most angry about the fact that the prime minister didn’t have an explanation.”

Three months on, no explanation has been forthcoming from Keir Starmer about the decision. But Murray went on to say the “hardest part” was he felt his work at the Scotland Office has not been recognised.

He added: “For me, the hardest part was the complete lack of any sort of recognition for doing a half decent job. That’s the hardest bit.

“The second hardest bit is having no explanation of why I was sacked, and as we sit here today, I still don’t have that despite me asking on a number of occasions.

“And the third bit is that I didn’t think I deserved the public humiliation of it all. I genuinely don’t know why it happened and that feels like an unfair gap.”

He also said this caused some hesitation when he was later offered the dual minister of state role and it took him five hours to accept the new position.

“My big questions about coming back into government were, why was it not offered to me at the time – and it wasn’t – why has the decision now been made and why? If I’m not good enough for the Scotland Office, why am I now number two in two major UK departments?”

However, he said he is now enjoying his new “meaty policy portfolio” and that the experience had taught him to “shout about” his successes more – a lesson he believes Labour ought to take ahead of next year’s Holyrood election.

He said: “We’ve already done so much… It is up to us as a party to shout about our achievements because no one else will do it for us.”