A leader's resignation usually follows a heavy defeat for a political party.
Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband immediately announced their intention to quit after disappointing election results.
And Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister after losing the referendum.
However, Jim Murphy, who led Scottish Labour to its worst defeat in nearly 100 years, has taken a different approach.
Despite presiding over an electoral catastrophe, he clung on, won a no-confidence vote from his party's Executive, and then quit.
Murphy also said his resignation next month would come after he tabled radical proposals for internal reform.
As we reveal today, there are deep misgivings within Scottish Labour that 'yesterday's man' should task himself with producing a blueprint for the future.
Understandable anxieties also exist that he wants to complete this exercise inside a month.
The ex-MP's masterplan is wrong for another reason.
After getting trounced in the 2011 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour asked Murphy to co-chair another review into the party's future.
This exercise resulted in a fairly modest set of reforms that failed to grasp the scale of the problems facing Scottish Labour.
In spite of this failure, Murphy wants a second turn at the tiller of reform.
In reality, the latest review appears to be more about Murphy's ego and desperation to leave a legacy - than it is about helping mend a broken party. It is about Jim Murphy, not Scottish Labour.
A better approach would be to appoint a commission, comprised of internal and external figures, to produce a detailed piece of work following a consultation with party members and activists.
While this paper supports the SNP and independence, it is of no benefit to the nation to have a rudderless Labour Party that cannot function. Scotland needs an effective opposition - that's party of democracy. If Labour wants to be that opposition, Murphy's colleagues should tap him on the shoulder and demand he go, and go right now.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article