A FEW days ago I met an experienced Labour hand who mentioned the 1976 leadership contest.

As the title of Giles Radice's account had it, it was a race between "friends and rivals", with Tony Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Tony Benn and James Callaghan all battling it out to succeed Harold Wilson.

All were men, but all were substantial figures: Crosland had redefined social democracy in the 1950s, Jenkins had proved a reforming Home Secretary in the 1960s, and Foot was the leading Parliamentarian of his generation.

The point my acquaintance was making was blunt yet undeniably true: the four candidates in the running nearly 40 years later simply don't compare in terms of calibre, yet in September one of them will be facing David Cameron at the despatch box and - theoretically at least - leading Labour into the next election.

Being Leader of the Opposition is the worst job in British politics. Only when there's a sense the incumbent government is getting tired and the next election offers some prospect of change (i.e. in 1994, when Tony Blair became leader, or in 2005, when Mr Cameron got the top Tory job) does it look like anything less than a poisoned chalice. These days, the majority of such leaders will not become Prime Minister.

And the reality hanging over this leadership race is that even by 2020 it looks unlikely Labour will be in fit enough shape to oust the Tories (although the prospect of a post-EU referendum split might change all that), certainly not without a dramatic recovery in Scotland. And, worst, none of the contenders looks like a modern-day Cameron or Blair.

Now all four candidates - two men and two women - are demonstrably decent, but there's little sense any of them will be the person who sorts everything out. Only three are serious contenders (Jeremy Corbyn, the Tony Benn of 2015, simply isn't a serious player), two of whom are known quantities, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, and the other, Liz Kendall, the only truly fresh voice in the mix.

But it's not clear what any of them bring to the debate that is demonstrably new. Mr Burnham has undergone a remarkable journey Blairite to Ed Miliband with a northern accent; Ms Cooper seems determined to say nothing that will rock the boat, while Ms Kendall has made pseudo-Blairite noises. For many members it'll be a tough call, picking the best of a bad bunch. "Andy might make us feel good," reflects another Labour source, "but Liz might make us win - and as ever this leadership contest is about what matters more."

Providing scant comfort is another reality: that the challenges facing the centre-left in the UK exist all over Europe, even in Denmark, which recently ousted its social democrat government in an election. Immigration, growing inequality and public spending cuts are issues everywhere, and there are no easy solutions, as recent developments in Greece starkly illustrate.

But pitching to the left, as some in the Labour movement will no doubt hope their new leader will do, isn't the answer. Sure, rhetorical leftism - as practiced so skillfully by the SNP - can win elections, but it offers few transformative solutions. Preaching opposition to austerity is the easy bit, achieving it considerably harder. In 2015 Labour had lots of policies but no coherent vision.

So what the new Labour leader will need above all is a good story to tell, and for all the reasons outlined above that will be extraordinarily difficult to formulate, not least as the story it used to tell continues to be boldly requisitioned by the SNP. In maiden speech after maiden speech in the House of Commons, new Nationalist Members have been articulating an often-eloquent tale of what Scotland is and could be. Last week Deirdre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) even quoted James Maxton.

So the new leader will need to "own" the party's recent defeat, and take the narrative from there. They'll also need to deal with Scotland, which for perhaps the first time in living memory will prove central to their leadership plan, for winning in 2020 will be impossible without more than one Scottish Labour MP and, more to the point, without a compelling vision of why Scotland should continue sending MPs to London at all.

"If I were them I'd come and live here for a month," one Scottish Labour insider told me, "go to the pub, get a feel for how things are and speak to as many people as possible." While difficult to pull off, it isn't a bad idea, though one that Mr Burnham - who's recent been stressing his dislike of the Westminster "elite" - might find easier than Ms Cooper, who has made a point of reminding party members that she was born in Inverness.

And while all the contenders appear to have retreated from the idea of a fully autonomous Scottish Labour Party, there's an opportunity for them to kill two birds with one stone, advocating a federal party (along Liberal Democrat lines) and also a federal United Kingdom, "pooling and sharing" resources both organizationally and constitutionally.

Indeed, when Chuka Umuna withdrew from the race a few weeks ago he made a point of using the "f" word in endorsing Liz Kendall. An "English" Labour Party looks likely to emerge soon, and Ed Miliband's successor will have to emphasise strength in increasing diversity.

Whatever happens, the obliteration of Scottish Labour at the recent election actually helps rather than hinders reform, liberating the party from big beasts such as Gordon Brown who have called the shots for decades. Whoever emerges as leader north of the border, meanwhile, will no longer need to win over Westminster-based colleagues who never really learned to love Holyrood.

And everyone expects that person to be Kezia Dugdale, although there are grumblings to the effect that she hasn't yet done enough in terms of setting out a compelling strategy and policy agenda. Sure, there might be a case for looking at the charitable status of independent schools (why not extend it to those in the state sector?), but it's a superficial distraction from a much more complex debate about inequality, educational or otherwise.

The party accepts, meanwhile, that whoever becomes Scottish leader has to be in charge for the medium-to-long term, i.e. not face calls to resign following next year's Holyrood election. "Acknowledging defeat next year almost needs to be incorporated into the message," says a Scottish Labour insider, "harnessing the feeling that voters might like the SNP but that they shouldn't be allowed to dominate completely."

It'll be hard to craft such a story, but Scottish Labour needs a dose of reality while tackling - as Ms Dugdale has been doing at First Minister's Questions - the Scottish Government on its record, which on almost every front is nowhere near as good as the spin suggests. Of course it won't be easy, but with tenacity, vision and a bit of political luck, both leadership races might provide the basis for a recovery, most likely modest, north and south of the border.