The Edinburgh Reporter has met Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray many times over recent years.
He was reelected to Westminster in Thursday’s General Election with a majority of 2637. This is an increased majority over his 2010 result when he won the seat just 316 votes ahead of Liberal Democrat Fred Mackintosh.
He has thanked all his supporters on Facebook:
It is a great privilege to have been re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South. I want to thank those…
Posted by Ian Murray for Edinburgh South on Saturday, 9 May 2015
Murray went to university at the very early age of 16. One of two sons raised by his mother in Wester Hailes he quickly realised the benefits that an education might bring and it was probably no surprise to anyone that he entered politics at a fairly early age. Most recently he was Shadow Minister (Business, Innovation and Skills). We presume that as the only Labour MP in Scotland he may be asked to become the Shadow Scottish Secretary
We met up on one occasion at Portcullis House in Westminster which is of course where he and the 649 other MPs who make up the UK Government work for part of the week.
You can listen to our 2011 interview with him and read more about him here.
The Labour MP has a parliamentary record of voting against reducing spending on welfare benefits, and also voted against raising England’s undergraduate tuition fee cap to £9,000 per year.
He is a great supporter of independent businesses and we met him at the opening of his own local post office in Bruntsfield when he brought the then Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna MP along to cut the ribbon.
As an opponent of the government’s scheme to sell off the Post Office he staged a protest at his local sorting office and we met him on a Saturday morning to find out why he was so against it.
The Edinburgh South MP won an award for his newsletter in 2012 which we wrote about here.
And of course he is well known for his support of Hearts and The Edinburgh Reporter interviewed him about that here.
Most recently we interviewed him ahead of the General Election 2015, and we were not surprised to be interrupted during filming by a local resident who wanted to thank Ian for the help he had given him recently with a problem.
You can watch the interview here:
#GE2015 Ian Murray Scottish Labour from Phyllis Stephen on Vimeo.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
