Why Jim Murphy should be Anakin Skywalker in the Scottish Sun's Star Wars mashup

I'm sure you've all seen the Scottish Sun's front-page Star Wars mock-up, with Nicola Sturgeon as Princess Leia. But you may not have seen a further mock up inside where various political figures are dressed up as Star Wars characters.

For example, Alex Salmond is depicted as Yoda and David Cameron as Darth Vader. But some of the others are hard to make out. Given it's the Scottish Sun, one would have expected Jim Murphy to feature prominently. Thankfully, the Sun tells us who's who a few pages later. But can you spot Jim Murphy in the image below?

I certainly couldn't spot him but it turns out the little tiny creature with the massive ears just to the left of Darth Vader is Jim Murphy:

This little critter is Salacious B. Crumb in the original Star Wars trilogy. The name may not be familiar but you'll recognise him easily in the movies - he's the annoying little thing that sits with Jabba the Hutt, laughing inanely at anyone being hurt or about to die, and famously eating out one of C3PO's eyes in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

So why depict Murphy as this creature? Well, Ed Balls is depicted as Jabba the Hutt so I guess the Sun wanted to show how insignificant Murphy is to the overall Labour party - especially after being slapped down by Ed Balls for wrongly suggesting there'd be no cuts beyond 2015/16 if we returned a Labour government.

But Salacioius B. Crumb was always a bad little monkey-lizard, as shown in Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki. In hindsight, that's perhaps true of Murphy but I don't think voters saw him as a 'bad one' during the early days of Tony Blair's triumphal victory.

However, that is how we see him now - as someone who turned from the good side of the force by his attraction to the dark side of the force. So I think the Sun should have went to the second trilogy and depicted Murphy as the troubled youth Anakin Skywalker who became a Jedi for the good side of the force but infamously turned to the dark side to become Darth Vader in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Anakin turns to the Dark  Side

Of course, ultimately Darth Vader realises his mistake and turns good at the end. We await to see if Jim Murphy will eventually see the error of his ways...