Monday marks the end of the gruelling round of over 40 Labour leadership hustings with the deadline for "supporting nominations". Tonight David Miliband had 130 constituencies' support, his brother Ed closing fast on 106, Andy Burnham on 34, Diane Abbott 18 and Ed Balls eight – with Ed Miliband winning most union backing. Hard to know how these convert to real votes when every party and union member gets their own ballot. (Anyone who wants a vote must join the party by 8 September.) Bookies put David Miliband on shortest odds but drifting out to his brother, with very long odds on anyone not called Miliband.
The contest has raised barely an eyebrow of public interest, though whoever wins may find low expectations a blessing. There is nowhere to go but up, as opinion polls offer cold comfort. Guardian readers should not be deceived by our daily reasoned critiques of profoundly misguided government policies. The coalition may be about to crash the economy, shipwreck the NHS and splinter the education system but the public does not agree, as yet. The coalition's honeymoon may last a while.
Study YouGov's polling: Conservatives are on 44%, Labour on 35% and Lib Dems on 13%. Gloat at the Cleggites' sinking fate if you like – but the combined government support is a stonking 57% and David Cameron's approval 58%. Which party is "led by people of real ability"? 31% Conservative, 15% Labour and 7% Lib Dem. People are profoundly alarmed about the economy and afraid for their future: 54% expect their own household to suffer this year, 69% expect to be personally harmed by public service cuts, 64% fear losing their job. Who do they blame? 48% blame Labour, only 21% the Con-Lib government. On a string of measures, Labour is harpooned.
With no leader, that's no surprise – Labour's past hangs heavy in the air. Peter Mandelson stirs the cauldron of loathing, finding it more fun to write a book about the Brown disaster than to have used his power to remove him. The leading candidates, each with their own guilt, find the past sticks to them like chewing gum on their shoe. Labour's achievements risk being buried with its bones, while blame adheres. Today's BMJ finds that although everyone lives longer, the mortality gap between classes is wider than in the 1920s – and it will get worse. That is the brick wall, the undeniable index of failure.
What's to be done? The new leader needs a ruthless analysis of what went wrong and what to do now. Resisting all the forces that push towards an inexorable and frightening growth in inequality must be Labour's fundamental guiding force. Determination to persuade people that ever-growing wealth at the top and shrinking real wages at the middle and bottom can be stopped has to be the mission for a radical new beginning, or else the party is adrift. What's it all for?
But first Labour needs a sound alternative economic policy to earn the right to be heard. The candidates are hamstrung while seeking selection – but the new leader will need honesty over some of the debt: spending needs to be paid for. All three leading candidates are starting to repudiate the absurd Brown/Darling "law" to halve the deficit in four years. An inspiring investment-for-growth plan and honesty about taxing more and cutting less than the coalition's 80:20 split will only be heard if past errors are acknowledged. Next year, when jobs cascade out of public services, when threats become reality with a crisis in youth unemployment, ears may open to alternative economics. But credibility requires more than the "cancel Trident" answer.
Thoughtful opposition can regain respect. Fight full-throttle attacks on the coalition's atrociously socially unjust policies, and paint a bright red line that sides Labour firmly with middle- and lower-earning Britain. But to convince on those issues, Labour needs to resist kneejerk opposition to everything. What shortsighted tribal folly of Jack Straw and Alan Johnson to join Michael Howard in attacking Kenneth Clarke's attempt to cut back on prison and police costs that bear no known relation to crime rates. To earn respect Labour needs to show it expects to be back facing these problems soon. So embrace the commission on paying for social care led by Andrew Dilnot, excellent former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and expect to accept his recommendations. Pledge no more organisational upheaval for the NHS – stop the marketising without more musical chairs. The "big society" may well become a hollow joke, as community work bringing lost boys back into education and preventing teenage pregnancy is already being cut. But don't rubbish what was a Labour endeavour to make community organising easier. On foreign policy, welcome Cameron's shift away from Britain's postwar subservience to the US – it liberates Labour from perennial branding as pinko "anti-Americans". On civil liberties, confess how far Labour went astray – which most candidates do.
A great test will be the new leader's approach to May's electoral reform referendum. Only the Milibands back the alternative vote unreservedly – but will they get the party out fighting for it? Outrage at the Lib Dems boils over, yet the new leader must prepare the party for future coalition. Winning alone is unlikely, even if AV is lost. The spectacle of dinosaur Labour fighting reform alongside the Tories risks showing how little Labour understands the need to change.
Blairites, lost in the 1980s, warn against returning to Labour's "comfort zone". Inflicting extreme ideological discomfort on Labour's core values has become their test of winnability, still fighting phantom Trots of yesteryear. That was how Labour lost its way. These days the party is a good mirror of the voters it needs to reclaim: of 5 million defecting since 1997, only 1 million went Tory, the rest mainly to nationalists and others on the left, or to disgusted abstention. It is the weird Tory party that is a hazard to its own leaders: to get selected, Cameron had to pledge to pull out of the European People's party. For all the media's red scares, Labour's frontrunners promise nothing they will later regret.
In the next weeks Labour has to confront its past to decide its future. The party is torn. Blairites urge pragmatism in a country they fear is irredeemably conservative-minded. Others say Blair's cynical calculations drove away Labour's natural support and extinguished public respect. In the long climb up from past mistakes, Labour needs a leader to trust voters' instinct for social justice, and not look back.
