Ed Miliband did a really good job of keeping the UK Labour Party united. They still lost, proving there is more to winning elections than having everyone singing the same tune.
Labour was thrashed last week because it was seen as tactical, not principled, and out of touch with the basic needs of voters.
Former Home Secretary John Reed was probably right when he said Labour had been "on the wrong side of all the major arguments - our economic competence, on the question of creating wealth, on the question of immigration, on the question of reform of the public services". In Scotland, Labour was bashed by the Scottish National Party for being Conservatives wearing red, while in England it was thrashed by the Conservatives for being puppets of the SNP. Only by being opportunistic, not principled, can a party manage to get on the wrong side of two diametrically opposed attacks.
The phenomenal result in Scotland looks like similar surges in support we have seen in New Zealand for Maori nationalist parties when they swept the Maori seats, and to a lesser degree for the wider New Zealand nationalist NZ First party. Both occurred when everyday working voters saw Labour as out of touch with their priorities. They sensed that a middle class elite in the party secretly despised their values, and punished it.
Miliband's Labour prioritised uniting the disaffected rather than attracting Conservative voters to switch. He ended the campaign playing to the vanity of a delusional celebrity luvvie, appearing on the YouTube channel of Russell Brand. It was the poisonous political equivalent of being aligned with Kim Dotcom. His centrepiece campaign stunt was to write his promises in stone, but on close inspection the promises were fuzzy and meaningless. You can't be held accountable for promising "a strong economic foundation".