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I feel sorry for generations of Labour voters and supporters who must look and wonder what on earth has gone wrong and what Labour is for.

A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much.

So our problem is not Labour, it is us, is making us attractive enough to gain disillusioned Labour support and to compete effectively with the Lib Dems for those loose votes.

The instinct of the Labour Party is if there's a problem, change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they're sure it's not going to deliver.

We spent too much time attacking Gordon Brown and Labour rather than setting out our own plans. People had decided they wanted change - the thing they were not sure about was the alternative we were offering, so going on and on about Labour missed the point.

Politically active people felt more and more disenfranchised, particularly during the ultra-New Labour years.

What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.

There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were finally gone. There was the grand hyperbole.

When I joined Labour in 1982, I didn't feel I belonged to a party born to power. My repeated experience was of bitter and repeated defeats.

The Labour Party in 2011 was in an exceptionally bad place. We'd been hammered in an election. We didn't see the scale of it coming.