Labour wannabes confront their demons in Nuneaton

Nuneaton: A 'gritty' town where Warwickshire meets Leicestershire, often only viewed from a Virgin Pendolino as it zips along the West Coast Mainline

The choice of Nuneaton as the venue for the first of Labour's hustings debates with their four candidates for the party leadership is a brave one.

The very name of the place must send a shiver down the collective spine of the party, just as Basildon did in 1992.

I was there at the count on election night when the significance of what was unfolding before our eyes was lost on no-one.

Now, as then, the first declaration from one of those key marginal seats had put the Conservatives on course for an unexpected majority in the next Parliament.

Nuneaton is a gritty town on the fringe of the West Midlands commuter belt where Warwickshire meets Leicestershire. Bill Olner had been its Labour MP from 1992 until 2010, when the Conservative former council leader Marcus Jones achieved a majority of just over 2,000.

The four contenders for the Labour leadership are: Jeremy Corbyn, Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper

This time, Labour had needed a modest swing of 2.3% to unseat him.

Some of the party's big campaign themes happened to be playing strongly here too. They'd told us the town's George Eliot Hospital was especially vulnerable to the Tories' 'secret privatisation plans' having spent part of last year under special measures.

And former mining areas in north Warwickshire, nowhere near as prosperous as 'Shakespeare Country' in the the south of the county, could be expected to provide evidence of that 'cost of living crisis'. If not here, where?

In the event, it was the Conservatives who benefited from a 4% swing, hoisting their majority to nearly 5,000. Emily Maitlis called it "the Basildon of 2015".

Nuneaton had signalled not only that Labour would fail in their bid to become the largest party, but also that the Conservatives were on course for their first outright win since that similarly dramatic night back in 1992.

The Nuneaton result was the 'Basildon moment' of the 2015 General Election - Basildon was a key result in 1992, re-electing John Major's Conservative government

No wonder "aspirational" was to become the buzz word of Labour's efforts to understand where it had all gone wrong.

There is no question that help for first-time home-buyers and extra assistance with child care costs for those "hard working families" we had been hearing about played strongly for the Conservatives in 'Middle England' constituencies like this where Labour had achieved their high-water mark under Tony Blair and where they really needed to stage a repeat if they were to have any hope of making-up for their predicted losses in Scotland.

So for Labour's four wannabe leaders, their prospective nemesis is not so much one another, as the long-term challenge presented to them all by a town usually glimpsed only at speed from Pendolino windows on the West Coast Main Line.

Which also begs the question about the wisdom of launching a leadership contest before the lessons of Nuneaton have been fully assimilated.

Labour had hoped for a slight swing to them in Nuneaton but instead Conservative Marcus Jones increased his majority by nearly 3,000 and said voters in the Warwickshire town had 'spoken for Britain

Could this be what the Stoke Central and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt was getting at when he told Midlands Today on the evening after the night before that the party needed to "agree the lyrics before selecting its lead singer"? At that stage he was actively considering running for the leadership himself, only to decide eventually to throw his weight behind Liz Kendall.

Perhaps Mr Hunt's decision also hints at a something even more unpalatable than the results from the Nuneatons of this world: that rebuilding his party after such an unexpectedly heavy defeat may be a ten-year job, which in turn points to the possibility that the key Labour leadership election will be the one after next.

It cannot exactly settle the nerves of the four rival candidates, preparing for a gruelling and potentially fractious summer of in-fighting, that significant numbers of their party colleagues are already talking about an escape clause which would enable them to dump a party leader without having to call a special conference if they are eventually considered not up to the job.

I'll be taking up these themes in this week's Sunday Politics when I will be joined in the studio by the Shadow Transport Minister and Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield Richard Burden, and the Home Office Minister and Conservative MP for Staffordshire Moorlands Karen Bradley. That's in our usual 11.00 BST slot on BBC One Midlands, Sunday 21 June 2015