Labour have rewritten the old adage about the secret of success.

It's now one per cent inspiration, 99 per cent aspiration. At least that's the view of many on the unreconstructed Blairites in the party who have been in full cry since Lord Mandelson launched his media coup at the weekend.

After some creepy remarks approving the former leader's personal qualities ("Ed did such a great job") Lord Mandelson and former ministers including Lord Hutton and Lord Reid went on to claim that Labour lost its way. It didn't appeal to the middle classes, sounded "anti-wealth" and had policies that big business and non-doms didn't like. Shocking.

Education spokesman Tristram Hunt said Labour needed to be "a party for people who want to shop at John Lewis". I don't know how many Scots shop at John Lewis but I'm told there are only three branches here so I don't think the "never knowingly undersold" vote could have swung it for Jim Murphy.

But Ed Miliband's brother, David, thinks this is the way the party needs to go to get back to power. Business spokesman Chuka Umunna has sought to be the heir to Tony Blair by being first out of the traps in the leadership race, under the banner of aspiration. Liz Kendall is close behind.

This back-to-New Labour movement has benefited from air time on the BBC, perhaps because it is also the view of commentators in the press; even the Guardian. It is the new normal. But there is really very little evidence to support the "back to Blair" thesis.

Look at where Labour lost votes: 400,000 and 41 seats in Scotland alone. I don't think returning to Mr Blair's preoccupation with market reforms for the NHS is going to win any of them back. Nor is genuflecting to the Sun and the Daily Mail view of the world, such a feature of New Labour.

The SNP won a landslide on anti-austerity policies that were to the left of Labour, as Ed Miliband conceded. We're told by commentators like Rafael Behr in yesterday's Guardian that this is "a delusion"; that the Scots weren't really voting against Tory policies but against something else which he didn't specify.

Well Mr Behr obviously wasn't listening to a word Nicola Sturgeon said; or to the reports from Channel 4's correspondent Alex Thomson, who had his nose to the ground in Scotland better than any of his metropolitan colleagues, and who reported that the Scottish landslide was very much about austerity.

But Scotland aside, there's little evidence that the aspiration thesis applies in England either. Mr Miliband's policies on non-doms was just as popular south of the Border as in Scotland. So was his attack on the big energy companies, and his proposals to renationalise the railways.

Labour lost many hundreds of thousands of working class votes to Ukip, which won only one seat but piled up four million votes. This wasn't about shopping in John Lewis but about immigration.

Against his better judgment, Mr Miliband was advised to make "controls on immigration" one of his pledge mugs, which just confirmed that trying to fight on Ukip territory is a mug's game. Just as you cannot combat racism by appeasing it, nor can you persuade people of the merits of immigration by failing to defend it.

There are a lot of people in Scotland who are unhappy about immigration, as the opinion pollsters never stop reminding us. But during the TV debates, Ms Sturgeon made the most positive defence of the economic benefits of immigration of all the leaders. And she still won a landslide.

The third reason for Labour's defeat in England had nothing to do with policies at all. It was the "Scottish menace". Scottish MPs were shamefully portrayed in the press and on Tory posters as if they were a marauding horde coming to steal from English taxes.

"The Scots" said the former Tory minister Owen Paterson, "treat England like some piggy bank that can be raided so that excessive amounts of money are taken from England without responsibility".

The claim that SNP MPs were going to "hold England to ransom" clearly had a big impact in the closing days of the campaign and may well account for the "late swing" to the Tories.

This was one of the most divisive general elections in history and the Tories won largely by demonising the Scotland and warning of a "nightmare on Downing Street" if they participated in the formation of the next government.

But here's the thing. Mr Miliband, to his shame, participated in this demonstration by saying that he would "rather not govern" than lead a government that relied on SNP votes in the Commons.

This was not only unparliamentary; it was also politically self-destructive. Mr Miliband thus threw attention on the possibility of the SNP holding the balance of power and he validated the Tory scare by suggesting that, in some way, it would be illegitimate for Scottish MPs to vote down a Tory Queen's Speech.

Some Labour commentators are still saying that, if only the Scots hadn't voted for the SNP, Labour would be in power. When you point out to these people that Labour also lost big in England, they reply: "But that was only because you scared English voters." If the Scots had just piped down there would've been no scare.

This argument is beneath contempt. SNP MPs are not to blame for the hysterical and undemocratic tenor of the Tory campaign and the excesses of the Conservative press. They didn't pay for that poster of Alex Salmond picking an English voter's pocket.

There wasn't a trace of anti-English sentiment expressed by SNP candidates during the 2015 General Election campaign. They fought their campaign firmly on the ground of economic justice and the decentralisation of power. To suggest that this, in some way, provoked the English backlash is offensive and wrong.

It is similarly wrong-headed for Labour to ditch its values and policy agenda because of a manufactured quasi-racial scare that had nothing to do with them. Commentators such as Mary Riddell say: "Scotland is lost" and that the party needs to focus on England and find an aspirational leader who can embody all the Tory-lite values that can win the south.

I fear that this view has already had an effect. Labour politicians were slow to condemn Tory moves to scrap the Human Rights Act. David Cameron's new cabinet has lost no time in declaring war on the BBC and the EU. Home Secretary Teresa May wants to save the boat people by not saving them and to introduce a "snoopers' charter".

Labour seem to have lost their voice against this assault on civilised values by a Tory government that is intoxicated by its unexpected success. We need a united response. It can't just be left to the SNP MPs to provide opposition.

Labour no longer seem to know what they stand for. They are beaten around the head by a media that wants the party to liquidate itself, and by internal advocates of New Labour who want much the same thing.

This is a further disaster for the shattered party in Scotland. Labour in England are going in precisely the wrong direction if they want to restore their electoral credibility north of the Border. The sooner Labour in Scotland detach themselves from this sinking ship, the better.