To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, something is rotten in the state of Britain. Brexit is a catastrophe. The Tory party has lurched to the right. Cheap patriots, like Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Angela Leadsom, responsible for Brexit and the betrayal of Britain’s interests, have bene promoted to the Cabinet. Three million EU citizens are to be used as bargaining chips in future negotiation.

Nationalism, isolationism, xenophobia and racism, so powerfully on show in the recent EU referendum campaign, drive the politics of intolerance and division in England. Scotland gears up for another independence referendum. Inequality continues to poison the well of British society. Where is UK Labour in all of this? Nowhere. Britain desperately needs a functioning opposition. Instead, over the next two months we will indulge in a summer of discontent and bitter infighting.

The struggle between social democracy and socialism, lies at the heart of this crisis, and is a problem as old as the party itself. Is it about: managing /taming capitalism or replacing it; social democracy or socialism; party membership or parliamentary party; protest or power; reform or revolution; democracy or direct action?

This is now an uncensored struggle for the soul of the party and there is no easy or obvious way to reconcile differences. This is a party on the brink.

Jeremy Corbyn could leave a positive legacy from his year in office. The Labour leader has shaken us from our complacency and reminded the party of its deeper purpose, but the electors and the PLP remain disconnected and unconvinced. By instinct, experience and past history and behaviour, Mr Corbyn is not the answer to Labour’s decline or long-term recovery.

There is no place, in or around the Labour party, for the political baggage – the tactics, tone, style and intolerance – of the old extreme left which the Labour leader has made no attempt to distance himself from. Momentum is divisive and dedicated to a very different kind of political struggle.

It is organised by people who want to turn MPs into delegates instead of parliamentary representatives and is fast becoming a party within a party. This is very reminiscent of a previous era where “entryism” was the modus operandi of the far left.

Left uncontested and unchecked Momentum could help wreck the party in its current form and create a split.

Yet the Parliamentary Labour Party has much to learn. Too often the PLP appears remote from the public and seems soulless, technocratic and managerial. They are lawmakers and need some of these traits. But lack of passion often leaves party members adrift and the public disconnected. The rightward drift of the PLP – real or imaginary – is out of step with the needs of Britain

Labour has to find a way for the political trinity – party members, the PLP and the people – to co-exist. This requires a public philosophy to compete and contest the market philosophy of the Tories; a series of unifying political themes that in tough times have hold the party together; a political creed without which people remain confused and mistrustful of what we stand for.

Where does this leave Scotland? In the short term we will be wrapped up in the leadership campaign. But we need to start now to think beyond the next two months and prepare for every eventuality in Scotland and Britain as the political fall-out from June 23 continues and uncertainty deepens.

Scotland could see Home Rule, a form of federalism, independence or some other, as yet unknown, four nation constitutional solution. Regardless of the outcome, an Independent Labour Party in Scotland is essential.

This could be part of modernising the UK party. We need a federal structure in which the new ILP could be a sister party, similar to what has happened in other parts of Europe. The UK Labour party remains dominated by the interests of London, Westminster and England. The leader of the Scottish party and the Labour First Minister of the Welsh Assembly do not sit on the NEC but the leader and deputy leader at Westminster do. And nominations for leader and deputy leader require a percentage of Labour MPs and MEPs but not MSPs at Holyrood. Reform of UK Labour is long overdue.

The ILP imprint would send a powerful message of Scottish identity and politically distinctive policies. This is the time for the Scottish party to act.

Henry McLeish is a former Labour First Minister.