The next leader needs vision if Labour is to be more than a protest party

If you have a vote in the Labour leadership election, The Independent will refrain from advising you how to cast it. We can say, however, that we think it is vitally important for the health of our democracy, and for the prospects of good government, that we have an effective opposition.

We would observe that none of the candidates has said much about what they would change about the legacy they inherit from Jeremy Corbyn, in the smoking ruins of the party’s worst defeat since 1935.

We record, with some surprise, that Sir Keir Starmer has a commanding lead in nominations and in polls of party members, and looks likely to win. Something has certainly changed since the Momentum wave delivered Mr Corbyn the leadership, and his faction seemed to have an iron grip on the apparatus of the party.

Most party members appear to accept now that Mr Corbyn lacked the leadership skills needed, while still respecting the man, and they defiantly refuse to let go of the idealism – or even utopianism – of the party’s programme. Sir Keir understands that shift better than either of his rivals, but the result has been a frontrunner’s defensive and uninspiring campaign.

Boris Johnson was criticised for running a “safe” campaign for his party’s leadership last year, and Sir Keir deserves the same criticism. Party unity is no bad thing, but when it is used by Sir Keir to avoid hard choices it risks storing up trouble for the future.

Refusing to “trash” New Labour’s record in government while also refusing to say anything bad about Mr Corbyn’s leadership seems flatly contradictory. We must, therefore, concede that Sir Keir has some leadership qualities in that he has managed to sustain the unsustainable for two months of the campaign so far. But leadership requires vision, ideas and decisions. This is, after all, a leadership contest.

The other candidates have been a little clearer. Rebecca Long-Bailey has made the most of her absolute loyalty to Mr Corbyn – going so far as to invite ridicule for awarding him “10 out of 10” as a leader – and her role in devising the policies of the last two manifestos. Lisa Nandy has been more explicit in putting some distance between her and Mr Corbyn, saying the party needs to change or die.

Ms Nandy has often been the most impressive speaker of the three, and the most willing to engage in actual argument rather than the regurgitation of slogans. Unfortunately, her campaign has been marked by errors born of inexperience. She appeared to praise the Spanish government’s crackdown in Catalonia as the model of how to respond to Scottish nationalism, and she signed a pledge on trans rights with which she said later she did not entirely agree.

Ms Long-Bailey has put the response to the climate crisis at the centre of her campaign, for which she deserves praise. Labour needs to be the party of the future, and that means getting ahead of the government, especially on this issue. With a cross-party consensus on the aim of a zero-carbon economy, the role of the opposition should be more than competing to set an earlier date as a target.

Labour should be contributing to a raucous and disparate cacophony of new ideas for the practical policies needed to achieve the target – ideas that do not look from a distance like a rebrand of Corbynism. An effective opposition should be coming up with good ideas, and confident enough to claim the credit if the government steals them.

If Sir Keir does win, we hope that he will decide that the best way to unite the party is to keep it moving. He needs new green ideas, and he needs to present Labour as the party that understands the new tech revolution – with the policies to protect people in an age of automation.

If he thinks that simply changing the leader for a more competent one, while keeping the “foundational” manifesto of 2017, is enough, he will be fighting not just the last war but the one before that. And he will face problems when he is forced by events to break away from the failed Corbynite past.

Angela Rayner, the likely winner of the deputy leadership election, showed some of the character and plain speaking needed this week when she said Mr Corbyn “didn’t command respect”.

With Mr Johnson about to enter a new phase of big spending, like a reformed Scrooge, Labour has to change its tune from complaining about “austerity”. We need an opposition, and that opposition needs a vision. We hope whoever becomes Labour leader will provide it.