General election: Battle for Labour's soul

Within hours of Ed Miliband's resignation, Labour MPs were turning their attention to the potentially bruising leadership contest that will unfold over the summer.

Miliband stepped down as leader on Friday after the party's most comprehensive general election defeat since Margaret Thatcher's final victory in 1987.

"This is not a speech I wanted to make," he said sombrely in Westminster on Friday. "I take absolute and total responsibility for the result."

The resignation came just hours after shadow chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat in a stunning upset that encapsulated a disastrous set of results.

The party's national executive committee will meet early next week to agree the timetable and procedures for the election of a new leader and deputy leader. But there are already disagreements about how that process should take place which will come to a head at the NEC gathering.

The brewing row may sound technical but is a proxy for the wider battle for the soul of the Labour party between the leftwing and the Blairite tendency.

Some MPs close to the unions want a swift contest which could ensure a smooth landing for the bookies' favourite, Andy Burnham, who is close to Unite and Unison.

They argue that a quick turnround of barely a month would avoid the lengthy navel gazing that characterised the 2010 contest - and allowed the Tories to frame the economic debate during Labour's leadership vacuum. "By making it go on so long, the Tories were able to make hay," said one.

But some Blairites suspect the unions want the contest over quickly to prevent their candidates from putting together a successful campaign. These could include Chuka Umunna, shadow business secretary, Liz Kendall, shadow social care minister, and Dan Jarvis, shadow justice minister.

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A similar battle will also play out for the deputy leadership. In that race the candidates are Blairite shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint, shadow leader of the Commons Angela Eagle and Tom Watson, an influential figure with close links to the unions.

"This is Benn v Healey Take 2," said one Blairite figure in a reference to the bitter 1981 battle for Labour's deputy leadership between Denis Healey and the hard left Tony Benn.

Another Blairite said the time had come for a new leader from the 2010 generation of Labour MPs.

Mr Miliband and his aides had led the party into a "total defenestration", he said. "All of these people are essentially finished, in my view: we need something new and radically different."

Labour figures were shocked as the results emerged on Thursday night, showing only a handful of wins - and the loss of almost all the party's Scottish MPs.

Speaking at the count in his seat of Doncaster North, Mr Miliband said it had been a "very disappointing and difficult" night for his party.

He returned swiftly to London in the early hours and spoke to staff - some tearful - at the party's headquarters in Victoria. A few hours later he resigned.

Labour won 232 seats, 26 fewer than at the last general election under Gordon Brown.

In the space of just hours it lost its three most senior personnel: Mr Miliband, Mr Balls and Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary, who lost his seat in Scotland. Jim Murphy, leader of Labour in Scotland, lost his own seat to the SNP deluge.

<Mr Balls stood with a fixed, distant expression as he realised he had lost Morley & Outwood to the Conservatives by 422 votes.

It was not long before the party was enveloped by introspection about the causes of its failure.

Lord Reid, a Blairite former cabinet minister, said: "We were on the wrong side of all the arguments: on economic competence, creating wealth, reforming public services," he said.

Labour took several seats from the Liberal Democrats, including Hornsey & Wood Green, Bermondsey and Redcar.

But it made insufficient headway in crucial Labour-Conservative battlegrounds to counteract the loss of almost all its seats in Scotland in the SNP earthquake.

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