Scottish Labour leadership contender Michael Marra, who was instrumental in developing the election manifesto, said the party must rediscover it soul.
The party’s finance spokesman admitted the party had been let down by Downing Street but also by mistakes made in Scotland.
He said it must campaign on what it is for, rather than what it is against if it is to reconnect with the country.
“Across the UK in May we lost to political insurgents railing against a Labour leadership that had lost contact with the country,” he said, in a clear admission of Sir Keir Starmer’s part in Scottish Labour’s biggest defeat since 1999.
“But in Scotland we lost to a feckless, incompetent and corrupt SNP whose two-decade record has seen every Scottish institution weakened and the opportunities of our population recede.
“We cannot spend the next five years doing more of what we did these last five, ten, fifteen years repeating the same mistakes, sniping and complaining.
“We need to clean up our internal culture and move beyond articulating what we are against and campaign on what we are for.”
Mr Marra, who is competing against Monica Lennon and Joe Fagan to succeed Anas Sarwar, said the challenges the party faces are bigger than one election and it must be ready to embrace radical changes in how it does politics.
“It used to be that the public knew where Labour’s hearts were and we had to win the argument that they could trust our heads,” he said.
“A big part of our challenge is now the opposite. We can make the sums add up but we must rediscover our soul and reconnect with Scotland.
“We can only change if we unite – activists, MSPs, MPs, Councillors, Trade Unions -our whole Labour family. The task ahead of us is to unite our party, renew our party and rediscover our moral purpose. I believe I am the leader to do that.”
Mr Sarwar stepped down to take up a seat in the House of Lords, where he joins Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government as a trade minister in the revamped Department of Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
Mr Marra, the first candidate to make the ballot, has won the support of rail workers union Aslef and most of his parliamentary colleagues. Mr Fagan has secured the backing of the GMB and Usdaw unions while Monica Lennon, the third candidate, has been endorsed by Unison and Unite the Union, but has not yet secured the necessary parliamentary nominations.
See also
Fagan criticises Sarwar’s failure to test SNP budgets
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