Eddie Barnes: The Scottish Labour leadership race has been sadly lacking in fresh ideas, and that bodes ill for whoever wins

Having lost its reputation for economic competence, it has to answer the question of how to pursue its stated aim of redistribution at a time when there isn’t a lot to distribute in the first place. How best to pursue social justice in a time of no money?

Ed Miliband and shadow chancellor Ed Balls have been tentatively approaching this question over the past few months. A tricky balance is being sought between doing the necessary job of hammering the government whilst trying to build up the new opposition’s own financial credibility. There is a long way to go.

But at least there is a grasp of the issue. The pity about the Scottish Labour leadership campaign – which has had all the autumnal spark of a wet firework – is that there has been far too little of such thinking. The party has shown admirable honesty about the reasons for its defeat in May. There has been a recognition that it lost touch with the electorate. But anyone hoping the leadership campaign would be the place where the party kicked on from such necessary self-analysis would be disappointed.

Tom Harris, the lone MP in the three-way contest, has at least tried. For example, speaking to Labour students two weeks ago, he averred that tuition fees might after all be necessary when the public purse was so constrained. But then he has almost no chance of winning.

For the other two candidates, MSPs Johann Lamont and Ken MacIntosh, there has been far too much vagueness, as if they are too afraid of their electorate to present them with any hard choices. Mr MacIntosh has talked of being the candidate of “change”, but has not gone very far in suggesting what this change may imply. Ms Lamont has stuck rigidly to Labour orthodoxy, promising task forces to solve unemployment. Combined with the pair’s similar vagueness on the constitution – where both say they are “open-minded” – and the result is that the race, which will help set the tone for Scottish politics at a historic time for the country, has not exactly set the heather on fire.

Of course, leadership races are never the best places to witness fresh thinking and out-of-the-box ideas. When Tony Blair won the Labour leadership in 1994, he did not tell members that he planned to get rid of Clause Four. That only came once he got in. Only last month, the Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser found out the cost of presenting the naturally conservative-minded folk who inhabit political parties with some radical plans.

But at least, the Scots Tories say, they had that debate during the race itself. Aside from Mr Harris’s enthusiastic policy prescriptions, and two thoughtful interventions by shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, it is hard to think of much debate that Scottish Labour has allowed itself. That does not bode particularly well for the party once whoever wins has to take over.