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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Alright, David Cameron has got what’s described as a rather nice problem, he’s spending the weekend picking his new cabinet.  Labour MPs have got an altogether more intractable one, trying to make sense of their crushing defeat last week.  I am joined now by the Labour MP and Shadow Europe Minister, Pat McFadden, a very good morning to you Mr McFadden.  Leaving aside plinths and visits to Russell Brand and things like that, what was the big strategic error from your point of view in the Labour campaign?   

PAT MCFADDEN: The big strategic error or the big strategic judgment certainly, was Ed Miliband’s decision from the get-go to say he was turning the page on New Labour, to portray out period in government as something of a departure from our values and the crushing verdict of the electorate was delivered on that strategy.  

DM: This all leads us back to the demonization within your very own party about the most successful leader you’ve ever had, of Tony Blair and Mr Miliband made that judgement very early on in his leadership that he had to signal that departure from the Blairite years.  

PAT MCFADDEN: That’s right.  I mean this was partially signalled when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007.  We then lost the 2010 election and then had a much more clear break with New Labour for the last five years so if there is one thing the voters were clear about in terms of the Labour party they were being asked to make a judgement on on Thursday it was a departure from New Labour and their verdict on that strategy was very clear because we’d been reduced to the levels of political representation that we last had in the 1980s.  

DM: So is that verdict, your interpretation of that verdict, telling you that they are saying they like New Labour or just that they didn’t like the version of Labour that had evolved over the intervening years?  

PAT MCFADDEN: Well it clearly wasn’t enough for us just to be the spokespeople for those struggling on low incomes and the NHS, the Labour party should always be the voice for those issues but that’s not enough, we have to be the voice for middle income families, we have to be the voice for wealth creation as well as fair wealth distribution and I think there’s another thing too, I think we need to have a more optimistic story about Britain’s future.  I think our rhetoric came across as a bit depressing at times, we were good at identifying problems but we were less good at identifying opportunities so when I talk about New Labour, I’m not talking about trying to find a rewind button to the 1990s because things have changed, we have got the challenge of nationalism and so on but what I’m saying is, in this leadership election that we’re about to embark upon what we need is a really deep and fundamental reassessment of our whole approach and our whole message.  

DM: A different version of that, we’ve been talking tablets of stone of course during the course of the election campaign from the Labour side, should this be written in a virtual table of stone from Mr Blair, Tony Blair, today ‘The route to the summit lies through the centre ground – absorb, digest and keep that close to your heart.’  Is that your view?

PAT MCFADDEN: Well it certainly worked very well for us for three elections running, we’ve now lost two elections running on departing from that message so I don't think the lesson here is particularly difficult to learn.  I think it’s pretty clear and the task now is as I say, not to find a rewind button but to go through a thorough and as fundamental a reassessment of New Labour.  

DM: But that all may well apply to England and indeed Wales but it doesn’t apply to your native Scotland does it?  You’ve got to tack way to the left there to outgun the SNP.

PAT MCFADDEN: Well I don't know if the answer is to tack way to the left but one of the changes from the 1990s is this challenge of nationalism and it’s difficult to challenge.  We clearly failed to do it in the election just gone.  The landslide for the SNP is a new challenge because it’s not based on policy, there is no … this is based on a national movement which is carrying all before it at the moment, that’s a difference from the 1990s, that’s why a rewind button is not enough.  There are new and different challenges but what we need is the courage that we had in the 1990s, no holds barred, no rushed contests, no picking a candidate who appeals internally at this stage and then is subsequently rejected by the electorate, we need to take our time to get this right.  

DM: Well an uncompromising analysis there Mr McFadden, thanks for that and stay with us because I’m glad to say we are joined by the Shadow Education Secretary, Tristram Hunt and maybe you’re being talked of as a leadership contender, are you going to throw your hat in the ring and how much of Mr McFadden’s analysis do you agree with?

TRISTRAM HUNT: I agree with much of what Pat said.  I think there were changes that we’ve seen in recent years relative to the 1990s and the New Labour era, principally in two areas.  I think inequality was much more obvious and deepening because of global economic changes that affected parts of Britain and that spoke to communities who felt left behind by globalisation.  Wage rates were depressed by immigration …

DM: That’s your analysis but the campaign just gone, you departed from the centre ground, you accept that and you shouldn’t have, is that what you’re telling us because that’s what Mr McFadden, not to put words in his mouth, that’s what he’s been telling us.  

TRISTRAM HUNT: I think that’s what the public told us.  I think the public didn’t feel they could trust us with their economic futures, they didn’t feel that we spoke to their sense of cultural and national identity in England and clearly in Scotland as well and I now think we face this double bind as the Labour party – and Pat is absolutely right, we are in a terrible hole, we are a hundred seats behind the Conservative party, we should be in no doubt about the seriousness of the crisis.  

DM: But people, Mr Hunt, are going to want to know, what did you feel during the course of the campaign?  You’re not an empty vessel waiting to be filled up by what the electorate tell you, what was in your heart there about where Labour stood just a few days ago?

TRISTRAM HUNT: Well I was certainly shocked by the scale of the loss, I didn’t see the scale of the loss …

DM: But was it from your heart, was it conviction that you had moved to the left with the party?

TRISTRAM HUNT: Well I felt that we could have had a stronger message for those aspirational parts of Britain ….

DM: So why didn’t you tell Mr Miliband that?

TRISTRAM HUNT: Well, you know, the Labour party is a coalition and we all push our various agendas at various points but we have a leader and quite rightly we support the leader and we continue to pay tribute to Ed Miliband’s leadership during that time but clearly the electorate have given us a really bloody nose, they’ve told us they don’t trust us, it didn’t work and the lessons I take from this is that we need, as Pat said, an optimistic progressive vision of the future which is social democratic and it’s just but it also speaks to the aspirational desire of communities up and down the country and secondly, we are more confident about celebrating identity, whether that’s English identity or Scottish or Welsh.  I think there were certain communities left behind by the impact of globalisation who feel under pressure and they went towards UKIP rather than coming to the Labour party and so we have both this challenge from the Tories in terms of aspiration but also UKIP in terms of …

DM: On that issue of aspiration let me ask you some specific questions, maybe you won’t answer them, would you keep in the next Labour party, whatever we are going to call it, and if you get to lead the party, would you keep the income tax rises, the non-doms, the mansion tax rises because people who were never going to pay those taxes, still thought, there must be some people who thought you are not the party of aspiration?

TRISTRAM HUNT: I think the cumulative effect of many of those messages and those policies made people fearful about us being on their side. Now I am not going to answer those questions because it’s too early to go through policy by policy …

DM: Well you kind of have.

TRISTRAM HUNT: .. but I think that the cumulative message of those policies was felt that actually the Labour party wasn’t on the side of people getting on and going ahead and wanting their children to do better and passing down the money towards them so we do have to look at those because as Pat said, we’re on the side of the underprivileged, we’re on the side of the health service, we’re on the side of a fantastic state education system but we are also on the side of those families who want to shop at John Lewis and go on holiday and build an extension and that wasn’t coming through in Worcester or Southampton or Lincoln or Carlisle and that’s where we lost.  

DM: It sounds to me like you are going to stand, do you want to formally announce it?

TRISTRAM HUNT: I think that everybody who loves the Labour party as I do needs to get involved now and we need to hear as many voices, as many politicians, as many councillors to be involved in this conversation because we are in a really deep hole and we need everyone to pull together and really have it out about what went wrong and what went right and I do want to be one of those voices but it is more than about just leadership, it’s about how the party is led and about the political philosophy behind it.

DM: A serious question now, I know you have been asked it before but is your first name a problem when it comes to campaigning in Scotland and things like that?

TRISTRAM HUNT: I think all of these issues are superficial relative to the really big problem of families in Britain feeling that the Labour party is on their side and we can have as many policies as we like but the message and the instinct wasn’t trusted.

DM: I just want to bring Pat McFadden back in, you like what you are hearing from Tristram Hunt there in terms of that analysis presumably, it’s almost like we’re all Blairites now.

PAT McFADDEN: I’m more interested in the argument than the person at the moment.

DM: Indeed but you agree with his points.  

PAT McFADDEN: I have great admiration for Tristram, we are friends and colleagues but I want to give a serious answer to your question.  We don’t just need a new person at the top of the Labour party, after Thursday we need a new and fundamentally different argument and I will make my judgement in this leadership contest on who meets that test because anyone who ducks things and says we can’t say that because it might offend some internal audience or that’s too difficult, is going to be ducking the challenge and the scale of the defeat makes the challenge pretty clear.

DM: Okay gentlemen, thank you both very much indeed, very interesting.  Pat McFadden, Tristram Hunt.