The welfare bill fiasco pitted an interim leader with eyes on the electorate against candidates watching the selectorate, and the old guard against new rebel MPs

Things can only get better or worse as Labour looks left and right

On one thing, Labour can agree. “It is in a state of emotional turmoil, divided and bewildered, and not sure what to do next.” Those were the words of the former cabinet minister David Blunkett – a man who dragged Labour out of the turmoil of the 80s and into government – and they would probably not be contested, even by Labour supporters on Twitter.

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“Things can only get better,” said one shadow cabinet member before correcting himself, adding: “The reality is we have further to go before we hit rock bottom. We are all just miserable and incredibly depressed.” Another said: “It is just possible but very hard to think of how we could have emerged from the episode with less credit.”

It is certainly no way to mark the 20th anniversary of Tony Blair’s election as Labour leader, which fell on Monday. Labour right now does not look a few years away from three successive election victories.

Surveying the chaos of the Labour rebellion on welfare, and the blood spilt, Harriet Harman, the interim party leader, was not regretting her bold decision to advocate that the party abstain on the welfare bill, accept the new reduced household benefit cap and not oppose tax credits being restricted to a family’s first two children.

Harman had not taken her stand lightly. She had spent a lot of time travelling the country after the general election defeat and became convinced Labour was unelectable unless it restored trust on the economy and welfare. A shadow minister ally explained: “She has been on a political journey. This was her farewell, her last chance to leave a mark at the highest level of the party. She just thought the party could not duck these issues for another four years.”

The shadow minister said Harman was “personally scarred” by her first experience as interim leader in 2010 when George Osborne painted Labour as responsible for the crash. Faced by the same possible leadership void as in 2010, and seeing a door marked “trap” painted in George Osborne’s handwriting, she suggested the party take evasive action.

Harman is damned either way. Andy Burnham said the party was crying out for leadership yet when she tried to provide that leadership she was criticised for overreaching, or showing poor timing.

With the leadership election in full swing, and the perception that the party was shifting left, not right, in the wake of election defeat, no leadership candidate, apart from Liz Kendall, was prepared to follow Harman on her journey.

The problem was the interim leader was focused on sending a message to the electorate, while the leadership candidates are ruthlessly focused on sending signals to a Labour selectorate.

As James Morris, Labour’s 2015 election pollster, puts it: “This has produced the worst possible outcome. Labour has neither shown the change on welfare that it needs electorally, nor demonstrated a strong sense of moral purpose.

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“Instead it has appeared to point in both directions simultaneously and compounded the sense that it doesn’t know what it is for any more. And worse, by making this a big issue in the middle of the leadership debate, the candidates have been forced to talk about what they will do once leader, walking them into the trap Osborne set.”

At the very least, the next Labour leader will have seen the price they will have to pay if they want to take the party to the centre.

The 48 rebels represent in proportionate terms the 10th largest revolt the party has endured in 10 years. Over his five years in charge, Ed Miliband suffered only one larger revolt.

The night revealed that new intake MPs – many linked to Unite – are going to be the thorn in a side of the next Labour leader. Twenty, many sitting on huge majorities, rebelled A clash was revealed between the new intake and some of the older hands such as Frank Field, the work and pensions select committee chair. He said: “It was very clear at the private meeting of Labour MPs some of the new MPs think they are the custodians of the ark. They want to be pure, they think they are looking after a sect, and the rest want to be a party of government.”

Another old hand was spitting blood, saying: “Some of MPs think they can do whatever they want now so far out from an election. We have Ed Miliband to thank for letting Unite run selection after selection”.

The episode exposed the extent to which any shift to the centre by the next leader will be jeered by the Scottish National party, Greens and the suddenly radicalised Liberal Democrats. A senior SNP MP crowed on Tuesday: “Harman was just being too clever by half. It is impossible to exaggerate how life-threatening last night’s vote to Scottish Labour is. There are a hundred reasons why you can vote against something at Westminster and she should have chosen one. Scottish Labour will be desperate after this.”

More immediately, the events will have consequences for the unpredictable Labour leadership election. Jeremy Corbyn was the only one of the four candidates to break the whip. This is hardly news since he broke the whip 148 times between 2001 and 2005. But the simplicity of his position is attractive and his team quietly pointed to his principles, amid the angst in the Burnham camp.

Burnham last week disclosed that he had told the shadow cabinet it should table a reasoned amendment and, if that was defeated, then oppose the bill at second reading. Cooper took broadly the same position, but did less to publicise it.

Burnham tried to persuade the shadow cabinet to adopt his position, but only partially succeeded. He then faced a choice. He could reject the shadow cabinet position, quit the front bench and, as he put it, split the party or instead accept the compromise at the risk of looking weak.

He decided to accept the shadow cabinet line, but send a letter to his supporters vowing to vote against the bill at third reading unless major changes were made at committee stage.

For his critics, his performance just magnified his propensity to flip-flop. “It’s not just over this. It defines his whole career,” said one critic. One Kendall supporter said: “The reason Labour is the story and not the welfare changes are due to the actions of Andy and Yvette. It is the kind of tactical manoeuvring that bears all the hallmarks of Ed Miliband. They could have accepted what Harriet was proposing. They did not and they fed the revolt.”

Another claimed: “It just shows you cannot triangulate the Trots. If you look at Andy’s Facebook, he has taken a hammering and being called a Tory.”

Burnham’s defenders argue he was put in an impossible corner and did his best to balance his conscience with his respect for Harman. Sixteen rebels and 25 other prominent supporters have issued a letter justifying Burnham’s stance.

Burnham was not the only Labour MP standing for office to oppose the welfare bill. In a sign of how Labour MPs believe the centre of gravity has moved left, three of the MPs standing to be the party’s candidate in the London mayoral race – Diane Abbott, David Lammy and Sadiq Khan – all sent signals to the London party by breaking the whip and voting against the bill at second reading.

Those signals assume the party membership has moved left since 2010, a legacy of Ed Miliband. This assumption is based on constituency and union nominations. The latest tally suggests Burnham and Corbyn are neck and neck on 71 nominations each, with Cooper on 56 and Kendall on 12. So far, roughly a third of the constituency Labour parties (CLPs) that can nominate have done so.

CLPs nominate by many different processes, but there is evidence from 2010 that constituency memberships ignore nominations. In 2010, Abbott, Ed Balls and Burnham secured 82 nominations between them but came top in the actual ballot in only 11 of these constituencies. Abbott was nominated by 20 CLPs but received fewer than 25 votes in 15 of these.

David Miliband received 40% of first preferences in 142 of the 165 seats that nominated him. Ed Miliband managed that threshold in only 21 out of 151 seats. But only the blind would doubt Corbyn’s progress or the extent to which Blairism is in retreat.

The truth is that no one reliably knows what the party membership is thinking but, after this week, things badly need to get better.