In recent years it has been suggested that a political party must have a complete face transplant, rejuvenating its image with the simple election of a newer, younger leader if the old brand is to be made electable again. Ted Heath was symbolic of the Conservative Party’s move away from the Old Etonian set that dominated in the 1950s, and the grammar school boy returned the Tories to government in 1970. Similarly, Tony Blair’s distinct grasp of estuary English endeared him to middle England, and thus earned him the keys to number 10. Then of course, there is David Cameron, who quite openly accepts the title ‘the heir to Blair’ and who is still trying to drag his antiquated party kicking and screaming into the 21st century and the PR demands that it entails.

Yet with Labour so comprehensively rejected at the polls last week, is there a need for another Blair-esque re-boot? No. If the problem was simply Gordon Brown’s dour demeanor then the likes of the Milibands would have followed the calls of Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt back in January and given the Labour brand the last minute lick of paint it required. They held firm because they new the truth was grimmer. After 13 years of abandoning its core socialist values, and with the sheer scale of the deficit putting an end to any hopes of continuing the great spend of the Blair years, Labour has run out of ideas. It seemed throughout the campaign that the only policies they felt worthy of promotion (that is when they weren’t attacking the Tories) were the child tax credits and their deathbed conversion to the mildest form of proportional representation.

If that was their offer to the British people, it is little wonder that it was declined. The truth is, unlike the Tories in 1997, image is not the issue, it is the substance. Labour’s favourite attack on David Cameron is his lack of policies, and there is some foundation in that claim, but the Conservative leader has always had ideas, a vision, a great Utopian dream of ‘the big society’. By contrast, Labour has never run out of policies, simply any coherent vision.

So for those bearers of the red flag who hope simply that the debating capacities of David Miliband or the mild-mannered character of Alan Johnson will be enough to return them to power, they are misguided. What is needed is not a face transplant, but a lobotomy, and they can be hard to come by.