Even Jim Murphy's supporters would have to concede that his short leadership of Scottish Labour has been a disaster.

In five months, he lost over 97% of his party's Westminster seats and he even failed to hold his own constituency.

He defeated a motion of no-confidence tabled by senior colleagues yesterday, but he made the correct decision by resigning an hour later.

At his farewell press conference, Murphy said he would unveil a bold reform agenda for Scottish Labour, which he said was the "least modernised part of the UK Labour movement".

In this analysis, he may be correct. Over the last few years, Scottish Labour has embarked on a series of half-hearted changes to its internal structures which have failed to impress the voters.

Murphy made encouraging noises yesterday about moving to one-member-one-vote, but his anti-Unite rhetoric may be a sign of where he believes change is necessary.

However, Murphy is in danger of misdiagnosing the real problem facing his party.

Scottish Labour has not been reduced to a rump of parliamentarians because trade unions have a certain amount of places on the Scottish Executive Committee, and a proportion of the votes at conference.

Instead, part of the reason why Scottish Labour is facing extinction is because it is perceived to be a branch office of the UK party and not Scottish enough - and so Scottish Labour is finding it hard to get a hearing from voters.

The other factor is that Labour - set up as a party to help the poor and dispossessed - conceded the anti-austerity pitch to the SNP, and opted for a Tory-lite path.

In this context, Murphy's reform plan should be to propose either an independent or federal Scottish party.

Such an organisation would be independently funded, rather than relying on cash transfers from the UK party, and have full policy autonomy on devolved and reserved issues.

This could mean, for instance, Scottish Labour taking a different approach on Trident to its sister party south of the border.

The direction of the UK Labour leadership contest is another reason for proposing this radical solution.

The eventual winner may be a centrist figure who will try to win votes from the Tories.

However, such an outcome is unlikely to spark a revival in Scotland, where Labour has lost tens of thousands of votes to the centre-left SNP.

A party financially and politically autonomous from UK Labour could be the first step towards Scottish politics becoming competitive again.