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.