The important question for Labour is not so much who will be elected as leader, it's the policies, communications strategies and approach to internal party governance the party will adopt as leader.
No matter who is elected leader next, none of those things will be handled in the same way as they were under the current leader.
This is a thread to post what you think Labour should stand for after this, and how it should be governed after this:
Here's my take, for which I welcome constructive critique:
Clearly, The exact way things were done for the last four years did not lead to victory. Which is why no one is calling for the party to do things in exactly the same way.
The ways things had been done under the 1997-2015 leadership would not work, either, as proved by the election results in 2010 and 2015 years in which the party approached elections in exactly the same way it approached them in 1997, 2001, and 2005 and slumped to a miserable 30% of the vote, while losing its old bastion in Scotland due to the arrogant, dismissive attitude the party took on the questions of devolution or independence for Scotland-Labour opposed both, and in then Indyref discredited itself by neither supporting independence , calling for "devo max" as an alternative to independence, or even running a distinctly Labour campaign for a "nay" vote, but instead joining an elitist "all-party" campaign for the "Nay" that came across even to may pro-"Nay" Scots as pompous and overbearing. Independence was narrowly defeated, but the Labour strategy there was the cause of the Labour wipeout in 2015.
So, in truth, nothing in the past is a valid guide to what SHOULD be done in the future.
Labour will not gain voters in the next election by anathemizing the leaders leader and policies of the last four years, or through mass suspensions or expulsions of that leader's supporters-a group which are still the majority of the party, btw-or by banning any organizations. Nobody out there in the electorate will cheer if the party takes vengeance on its base, and no votes will be gained. And it goes without saying that if Labour goes back to being nastily antisocialist again, it will die out, as that would mean the party had chosen to stand for nothing and would obviously cease to have any reason to exist.
By the same token, it will not gain any support by keeping things done in exactly the same way.
Whoever leads it will need to defend herself or himself immediately against unjust personal attack. The party will need to create a "rapid response" team to address any such smear.
That leader, whoever it is, will also need to be willing to impose some forms of discipline on the PLP, to make it clear that any MP who attacks or attempts to undermine the leader on a personal level, or attempts to force that leader to stand down, especially during general election campaigns when a leadership change isn't possible, will face suspension or possible deselection.
The PLP owes that leader and the party a public apology, will need to admit that it bears at least partial responsibility for the negative public perceptions of that leader and for the defeat which could have been avoided or at least minimized in magnitude had the PLP treated that leader and the Labour base with some level of respect-and will need to pledge that, even if the next leader is not to its liking-as the next leader probably would not be in a free and democratic vote, since most of the party is socialist-it will never treat that leader or that leader's supporters in the same way as it just did the supporters of the outgoing leader.
On internal party governance-Labour needs to adopt Open Selection for all sitting Labour MPs-the only sector of the party which really opposes Open Selection is the PLP itself, whose members feel they are entitled to automatic reselection for life by Divine Right or something.
There needs to be restoration of full control over candidate selection to constituency parties and restoration of full control over policy to the party conference, not the leadership.
The policies Labour stood on in 2017 and 2019-with the exception of the pointless concession forced on the leadership to accept a second referendum on the EU-were and ARE popular, and in the main do not need to be abandoned. The voters never hated the actual policies. The main problem was that too many of them were announced, and too many were announced too late. Over the next four years, the policies can largely be kept-the voters weren't and aren't demanding that Labour go back to Blairism, and the 2010 and 2015 results, combined with the pathetic 10,006 votes won by Change-the Blairite party-in 2019 prove they never will-but there should probably be fewer of them headlined during the campaign. There are no issues on which a policy further to the right would serve the party better. The three nationalization pledges-water, electricity, and the rails-have to be kept in the manifesto, as nothing to their right can in any sense be called Labour, just as the only truly Labour policy would be a totally public and fully-funded NHS free at the point of sale. There have to be some things which are sacred or Labour becomes nothing at all.
The big change needs to be a commitment to a massive-and to be in any way effective, openly socialist-economic revitalization program for Wales, the North the North East, and the Midlands. The big reason those reasons are and will always be Leave is that backing Leave was the only way available to those regions to express their opposition to the policies which have choked them to death economically since 1979. The wounds were inflicted by Thatcherism, left untreated by Blairism, and expanded and infected by EU economic constraints. Labour has to be prepared to address that if it is to reunite the party and retake the heartlands, and Labour can never win another election if it writes off the heartlands by returning to Blairism-the voters there will not be impressed by more flag-waving and it will make no difference to them if Labour goes back to fetishizing the Union Jack and some now-extinct notion of "Britishness". To get the heartlands back, and to have any chance of preventing Scotland from leaving the Union, Labour needs to make it clear that it will never go back to anything of the dismissive, elitist "Cool Britannia" era-to a "Labour" government which treated voters in the now-extinct "middle England" as if they-and the most reactionary and elitist of their attitudes-were all a Labour government cared about.
To do this, Labour must speak with a Northern voice-but a socialist Northern voice, not a hateful, reactionary northern voice that spends more time attacking socialists than Tories.
Labour must do this while connecting with the anti-xenophobia values of the Remain areas-and while getting Remain voters to accept that the EU issue is settled. If Labour Remainers aren't willing to do that, they need to be willing to take the lead in pushing for the Wales/Midlands/North/North East economic revivalist policies and to admit that they were wrong in equating support for Leave with ignorance and bigotry when it was never as simple as that.
The choices made now need to be constructive, not vindictive. Chewing out the socialist majority of the party and forcing large numbers of people representing that majority is no answer. Neither is spending more time attacking socialists than attacking the Tories.