ISTOCK The Dirty Dozen 12 people who ruined Labour It’s not only Ed Miliband who is to blame for the Labour Party’s benighted state.

LONDON — As Labour lurches toward its leadership election, a mere seven weeks away, here we name the 12 guilty men — well actually, 11 men and one woman — who between them should take responsibility for Labour’s disastrous election rout and subsequent nervous breakdown.

David Miliband

Brother of the failed leader, Ed, he could have been Labour’s savior if he hadn’t bottled the chance — twice — to stand against Gordon Brown in 2009 and 2010. Fellow cabinet ministers James Purnell and Patricia Hewitt, among others, had tried to foment enough discontent for him to challenge Brown. Purnell even resigned his cabinet post on Miliband’s behalf. And still he didn’t have the nerve to take on Brown’s famous clunking fist. As a result, when he finally decided to run after the 2010 election defeat, his brother stood against him. And the rest is ugly history.

Alan Johnson

The ultimate “if only” man. If only he’d resigned from the cabinet with James Purnell in 2009, as Purnell expected, the coup against Gordon Brown would have been inevitable. If only he’d agreed to take over from Ed Miliband halfway through the last parliament, Labour would have had a decent chance of winning. If only he’d agree now to be a caretaker leader, the party would have a better choice of leadership candidates in 2018. But Johnson is a rare politician in not aspiring to be promoted beyond what he sees as his abilities. And he’s even rarer in understanding that political success isn’t the most important thing in life.

Gordon Brown

Brown is the exact antithesis to Johnson. He never understood how ill-equipped he was to be prime minister. He lacked the emotional intelligence, the charisma, the patience and even — as it turned out — the vision of what he wanted to do once he got the job he’d spent a lifetime plotting for. His legacy? A party that may spend decades shaking off a reputation for spending too much and regulating (the banks) too little. And a party still riven by bitter faultlines between Brownites and Blairites, even though neither man is in parliament any more.

Andy Burnham

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the bookies’ favourite for the Labour leadership still insists that the 2015 manifesto was the best he had ever fought on. So which part of the message the voters gave Labour in May does he not understand? Burnham is doubly culpable as he encouraged some of his parliamentary supporters to lend their nominations to Jeremy Corbyn so Burnham wouldn’t be the most left-wing candidate in the race. The result? A full-blooded socialist 1970s throwback is now seriously in the running to lead the party.

François Hollande

The Socialist French president’s victory in 2012 gave Labour false hope that European democracies were moving to the left, and that an anti-austerity message could win them an election. The fact that, within two years of winning power, his approval ratings hit record lows of just 13 percent might have given Ed Miliband the tiniest hint that his example was not to be emulated.

Nicola Sturgeon

The only woman on this list spotted — along with her predecessor Alex Salmond — that the Scots were fed up with Labour taking them for granted. The Scottish Labour machine had become idle and complacent. When Labour joined up with the hated Tories and Liberal Democrats to fight the No to independence campaign, the SNP were gifted a fabulous electoral opportunity. All they had to do was hold on to the 45 percent of the vote they won last September, and they would wipe out the other three parties in the general election. That’s just what Sturgeon did.

Tony Blair

The most successful politician in Labour’s history should have done more to entrench his legacy. He was dismal at succession planning: had he promoted David Miliband to a big job after the 2005 election, the young pretender would have been better placed to run against Brown for the leadership in 2007.

And he didn’t pay enough attention to candidate selection, leaving the party with too few MPs who understood the importance of appealing to the center ground. Oh, and then he trashed what should have been a great reputation by invading Iraq and advising hideous dictators for bucketloads of money once he left office.

George Osborne

The most political chancellor of recent times emulates Labour when it suits him — living wage, banking levy, cracking down on non-doms — but also conspired to make the last election almost impossible for Miliband to win. Osborne claimed he was sticking to the “long-term economic plan”, while actually relaxing his deficit targets so that he didn’t squeeze an already fragile economy dry. The result? Two million new jobs created in the private sector, zero inflation and a return to growth. If that wasn’t a recipe for a Labour-thrashing election victory, I don’t know what is.

Liam Byrne

Yes, I know it must have seemed funny at the time. But for the chief secretary to the Treasury in Gordon Brown’s government to leave a note for his Tory successor saying, “I’m afraid there is no money” was a dreadful hostage to fortune. The letter became David Cameron’s favorite prop during the election campaign. In fact, he produced it from his pocket so often, it’s a wonder it didn’t fall apart — unlike Labour’s attempt to prove its economic competence.

Tom Watson

Gordon Brown’s mafia henchman is the overwhelming favourite to be the next deputy leader. God help his party if he wins. One MP told the Sunday Times he was supporting Watson because he didn’t want to find a horse’s head in his bed. Watson has brought all the worst tactics of machine politics into Labour — and has used his influence on candidate selection to ensure that trade-union-supporting lackeys would pack the Westminster benches. He used to share a flat with über-trade-unionist Len McCluskey. Enough said.

Len McCluskey

The general secretary of Britain’s largest trade union, Unite, loves nothing more than throwing his weight about. Constantly threatening to withdraw his union’s funding of the Labour Party if he doesn’t get the leader or policies that he wants, McCluskey plays to voters’ worst fears that Labour is in the pocket of the unions. Ed Miliband wouldn’t have beaten his brother without Unite’s backing, so McCluskey and his cronies have a lot to answer for. And now his union is supporting Jeremy Corbyn …

Ed Miliband

No list would be complete without the man who led Labour to its worst defeat since 1987. He was handed an extra 7 percent of the electorate on a plate as soon as the Liberal Democrats joined the coalition government in 2010. Yet he still managed to win fewer seats in 2015 than Gordon Brown had at the previous election. Miliband deluded himself that British voters had moved to the left and designed his policies accordingly. He leaves his party 99 seats behind the Conservatives, a gap that will widen with boundary changes, and that his successor will struggle to close.

Mary Ann Sieghart has been a political commentator for The Economist, The Times and The Independent. She chairs the non-partisan Social Market Foundation think tank.