Does Labour still not get it?

You wait ages for a Labour leadership contest, then five come along at once. In the past few days, nominations have closed for the contests to be leader and deputy leader of the UK and Scottish Labour parties respectively as well as on the party’s pick for London mayor. Who wins these races will determine how Labour defines itself in opposition and how quickly it can regain power. Labour is in the dire position of being out of office at UK level, at national level in Scotland and at city level in the capital.

Labour should be taking a long, hard look at itself before deciding what to do next. Instead, it has a leadership contest in which sloganeering seems to be taking precedence over thought. The most incisive speech we’ve heard about Labour’s predicament was the one Tristram Hunt delivered as he announced that he was pulling out of the contest because he didn’t have enough support to get on the ballot paper.

All this could have been avoided had Ed Miliband listened to those who urged him to stay on as a caretaker leader, like Michael Howard after the Tories’ defeat in 2005. Howard took the chance to give all those running in the subsequent leadership contest prominent roles in the shadow cabinet and ensured that the race was long enough to give lesser-known candidates a chance to make their mark. The result was that the Tories picked David Cameron, not the early frontrunner David Davis, and returned to power at the next election.

Miliband’s refusal to stay on, made all the more puzzling by the fact he has returned to speak in the Commons already and is regularly seen around Parliament, has dangerously foreshortened this contest. There are only four candidates on the ballot; one of them is there only because of nominations from those who don’t intend to vote for him; and Labour will have elected its leader before it meets for its first post-defeat party conference.