You’re right to criticise Labour, Alexander told

In a keynote speech last night, the shadow foreign secretary declared that his Scottish party had done far too little to sell “a story of possibility” about Scotland, and had instead wallowed in the past in a comfort zone of anti-Thatcherism.

Mr Alexander said it had been seen by the public as complaining in “unspecified ways” about the SNP’s policies.

He also acknowledged that the SNP was now “broadly aligned” to the values of most people in Scotland, saying that Labour now had to reclaim its values to win back public support.

Last night, MSPs, MPs and former party leaders all said they accepted Mr Alexander’s blunt analysis, but the speech also prompted fresh calls for Labour to back a further transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament, as a way of putting forward a positive message.

Former first minister Henry McLeish said: “There is a growing group of people in the party who do acknowledge the fundamental challenge, and it is important that strategists like Douglas are now coming round to what we have been talking about.”

He said Labour had given the SNP “far too much leeway” as being seen as the party of patriotism and positivity in Scotland. If Scottish Labour was going to be able to challenge the SNP, it had to support a new system of so-called “Devo-Max”, where Scotland would remain in the Union, but where the Scottish Parliament would control most tax powers.

Mr McLeish said: “I don’t think it makes sense for there to be a rearguard Unionist reaction to independence. It needs to be a competing narrative, and that has to be around the issue of Devo Max.

“Our credibility requires that alternative. Let’s be standing for something positive.”

Five months on from its humiliating defeat to the SNP, the party is now preparing for a leadership contest next month, with three candidates preparing to stand for the post of Scottish Labour leader.

One of those standing, Tom Harris, MP, said last night that he also backed Mr Alexander’s analysis, and warned that the party had allowed itself to be cast entirely as “negative” since pushing through devolution in 1999.

He said: “This is something I have been saying for a while; our continued negativity about Scotland and about our future has contributed to what has happened to us. We cannot win the hearts and minds of people by talking about how awful things would be if Scotland becomes independent and that we need to lock everyone up who carries a knife. That is not the message to inspire a nation.”

Fellow leadership candidate, MSP Ken Macintosh, said Labour had not kicked on from the late Nineties, when the Labour government created devolution.

He said: “Having created the parliament, we failed to take advantage of that. Most of us in the Labour Party haven’t forgotten our values, but maybe we have forgotten to talk about them.”

Another leadership candidate, MSP Johann Lamont said: “I welcome Douglas’s speech because I have long believed that a strong economy and a strong society are different sides of the same coin.”

Current leader of the Holyrood group, Iain Gray, also gave his backing to the speech, aides said last night – despite the fact that at least part of Mr Alexander’s criticism was aimed at Mr Gray’s tactics in the Holyrood elections.

Another Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale said: “Labour needs to stop opposing for opposition’s sake. For a long time we have had a nay-sayer attitude and we need to get the feelgood factor.

“We need to talk about fairness but we also need to talk about aspiration. We always talk about New Labour being a project attracting middle England but we need to recognise that Scotland has a big middle class as well. They didn’t vote for us because the SNP had a more positive vision and we have to find a narrative that talks to that.”

SNP figures, however, said that while Mr Alexander’s analysis was right he had to take blame for Labour’s plight as one of the key figures behind the party’s “negative” strategy since devolution.