But Murphy built a reputation for even-handedness and attention to detail during his previous career at Stormont, where he served as Mo Mowlam’s deputy as Northern Ireland secretary during the 1997-98 negotiation of the Good Friday deal.
While the outspoken and eccentric Mowlam garnered the headlines, Murphy spent months away from the spotlight leading the U.K. government’s team in the crucial “strand two” of negotiations. These spelled out how a future cross-community administration for Northern Ireland would coordinate cross-border policies with the government in Dublin — an agenda long opposed, but grudgingly accepted in the end, by most unionists.
Such bridge-building between the two parts of Ireland became a cornerstone of the Good Friday compromise package. But it was undermined first by Brexit, with its threat to make the Irish border “hard” again, followed by the unionists’ two-year shutdown of Stormont, which also torpedoed political cooperation with Dublin.
Murphy — who also served as Northern Ireland secretary from 2002 to 2005 during the first protracted collapse of Stormont — is already on the record describing the trade protocol, and particularly the Windsor Framework rejig, as a necessary policy to limit Brexit-related shockwaves in Ireland.
In his 2024 Lords speech lauding the deal negotiated by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that finally got Stormont restored, Murphy rejected unionists’ claims that Northern Ireland should have the same trade rules as Britain. He said there had always been checks and restrictions on goods movements dating to Northern Ireland’s foundation in 1921 shortly before the rest of Ireland won independence from Britain.
“The idea that somehow or other Northern Ireland should not be different really is nonsense,” Murphy said then. “Northern Ireland is different in all sorts of ways.”
