Mark Stuart: After the navel gazing, Labour should focus on being an effective opposition

However, the debate now going on about Labour's future direction in Opposition is important. Come September 25, when the new Labour leader is elected, what will the party's stance be: will it merely oppose everything the coalition Government does, or will it seek to be more constructive?

The dilemma can be summed up in the phrase "to bin or not to bin": in other words, which bits of the New Labour project should be recycled and which bits should be thrown in the skip?

Firmly in the recycling camp are David Miliband and Andy Burnham, who both think that the party should not "trash" the best parts of New Labour.

In some senses, they are right – and Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, was at pains to express this during a weekend of campaigning in Leeds, once he had got over the embarrassment of the publication of a guide explaining how to hold house parties in support of his leadership bid.

It's very important that Labour in Opposition doesn't commit a series of u-turns when it comes to supporting continued reform of the public services. It would, for instance, be wrong of Labour to oppose the coalition's expansion of foundation hospitals and academies, given the party introduced such policies in Government.

But even the most Blairite of leadership candidates need to recognise that New Labour in government became over-centralised and far too obsessed with creating a surveillance state. As the coalition rapidly devolves power downwards and scraps ID cards, Labour needs to urgently re-examine its fixation with centralised state control.

Leadership contenders Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are to be found in the "bung it in the skip" camp. Both have come out against the war in Iraq. Both refer to the party having lost touch with its traditional values. Both seem intent on shifting the party to the Left. Ed Miliband has already suggested a High Pay Commission and supported the idea of a living wage; he even refers to his Labour colleagues at leadership hustings as "comrades".

Mark Stuart is a political analyst from York who has written the biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.

Ed Balls, on the other hand, is being unwittingly New Labour by asking his party to take another look at immigration. The reason for the success of the modernisers, under both Kinnock and Blair, was that they realised the party, under Michael Foot, was invariably on the wrong side of the argument on key issues like nuclear disarmament and crime. Slowly, Labour toughened up its stance on defence, and eventually took

a harder line on criminals. That's what turned around the party's fortunes.

Hardening Labour's policy on immigration could also reap electoral rewards. As election experts have already grown fond of repeating, Labour lost the support of hundreds of thousands of voters among the skilled working class at the General Election: exactly the kind of people who voted for Margaret Thatcher in 1979, but switched to Tony Blair in 1997.

These voters gave Labour a kicking because they felt that Blair and Brown had lost touch with their daily concerns, particularly on immigration. Although Balls probably won't win the leadership contest,

he should be listened to on

this issue.

However, what Labour mustn't do is allow itself to become obsessed with being on the right side of the argument, in the face of radically changed circumstances. Take a controversial issue like the future of Trident. The Labour Party has allowed itself to become blinkered, unable to see that the country cannot afford a new weapons system and that old-fashioned, Cold War deterrence doesn't work against terrorist fanatics, a view supported even by some Army generals. But because of the deep scars left by the 1980s, the party doesn't have the courage to shape public opinion.

Labour also needs to take a fresh look at the future role and scope of the state in light of the need for large spending cuts.

Its spokespeople can't simply bleat in the House of Commons after every Government cut without losing credibility with the electorate.

No. The fastest route back into government for Labour is to become a constructive opposition. Of course there will be issues where the Labour movement wants to make a stand, such as defending police numbers, Sure Start centres and child tax credits. The party needs to find a happy medium, summed up by David Miliband's recent comment that Labour in Opposition should be "constructive where appropriate and raucous, determined and passionate where necessary".

There is a model for such an Opposition, but we have to go all the way back to the late 1830s to find it. Sir Robert Peel's constructive period in Opposition helped the Tory Party return to Government in 1841 after its shattering defeat in 1832. Winning elections is all about reassurance, and there is no faster route back into office than appearing like a government-in-waiting.

Labour is lucky in the sense that the coalition government hasn't brought forward much legislation yet. But all that will change in the autumn: let's hope the next Labour leader is able to rise to the challenge by adopting a positive approach.