THE SNP are now the "real opposition" to the Conservative Government in wake of Westminster’s Welfare Bill vote, Nicola Sturgeon has claimed, as Andy Burnham, Labour’s leadership frontrunner, admitted his party had messed up its approach to the issue.

In comments that are a direct attack on acting leader Harriet Harman’s stewardship, the MP for Leigh near Manchester said Labour was “crying out for leadership”.

The key vote saw 48 Labour MPs defy Ms Harman’s call for her party to abstain on the main Second Reading Vote after its so-called reasoned amendment, setting out what it supported and opposed in the Government programme, failed.

Mr Burnham stressed how his leader’s compromise position “wasn't strong enough for me" and that Labour would oppose the Bill "outright" if he became leader when the legislation returned to Parliament in September.

Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Burnham’s left-wing rival, opposed the Bill outright, denying he had split the party and stressing how he had been right to oppose the plan to implement £12 billion benefit reductions in Chancellor George Osborne's summer Budget.

But Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said Labour was beset by "internal fear and loathing" and that the Bill would put welfare funding on a "more sustainable footing" while protecting those most in need.

The First Minister also seized on the Labour split, claiming the party seemed to have “lost any sense of purpose or ...direction” and if the two parties had joined forces, they could have defeated David Cameron’s Government.

At Westminster, Labour officially abstained on another vote; this time on the Budget.

SNP MPs questioned why the Opposition, which had voted against all the Coalition's Budgets at second reading, would not oppose the first all-Tory one in nearly two decades at the same stage; they then occupied the Labour frontbench.

Nationalist members spilled onto the second and third rows as they pushed their case to be the "actual opposition" to the Tories.

Labour's Barbara Keeley, the Shadow Treasury Minister, sought to justify Labour's abstention, stressing how the most contentious measures in the Budget were not in the Finance Bill,with new limits on tax credits among the policies being brought into force through other legislation.

Elsewhere, Ian Murray, the Shadow Scottish Secretary, defended the approach of the Labour leadership on the Welfare Bill, saying he and his colleagues, who had abstained, had voted for the Labour amendment not to give the Bill a second reading but, when that failed, it was right to abstain "because while there is much in the Bill that we disagree with, there are policies which we support"; such as plans to create three million apprenticeships and cuts to council and housing association rents.

The Edinburgh MP stressed the claim by Ms Sturgeon - that if Labour had joined the SNP, it could have defeated the Tory Government - was untrue and the FM knew it.

"You can't defeat a Government with an absolute majority on a major piece of their legislative programme. To suggest otherwise is wrong,” added Mr Murray.