There is no secret to what we must do to win again in the south. All that is needed is hard work and discipline, to clarify our message and the way we are delivering it and to regain our self-belief and reputation for competence.

Engineering an ego-free politician would be a triumph for biotechnology but it just hasn’t happened yet. A promotion missed, an unfair sacking, a minister who let us down on a constituency matter or a colleague who we didn’t get the expected support from – there are a thousand reasons why we politicians look for opportunities to get our own back or boost our self-esteem. The trouble is when it breaks out into the open. Nothing loses public support and undermines belief in our competence faster than infighting.

So the first step towards winning again in the south is to relearn the discipline and loyalty to the leadership that got us into power in the first place. If the people closest to Gordon can’t settle their differences, real or perceived, in private and curb their need to chatter with journalists then they have to go. If influential figures in the party can’t express their ideas in a constructive tone then we have to isolate them and make sure the public understand they speak for noone but themselves. The private briefings and the bickering of recent weeks has to stop and stop now.

Step two is also obvious. We don’t need a different message in the south but we do need to make sure our message is heard in the south. For every major speech that the leadership makes in Scotland they must make another one in the south and every initiative launched in the north needs to be launched in the south as well. And don’t make the mistake of assuming that a message delivered in London is going to be heard in the wider South – messages for the Southern shires have to be delivered in the shires!

Our third step to victory is to be clear about those parts of our message that southern ears are listening for. People in the south, like people everywhere, don’t need to feel that the government is only focussed on them but they do need to feel that there is a sufficient focus on them. And the messages that come out of government need to chime with their personal daily experience and aspirations.

The New Labour coalition that won in 1997 drew in southern voters that previously had not been our supporters precisely because it appealed to a wide spectrum of experience. In any event, there is no point winning in the south if as a consequence we put off people in the old heartlands. So the fourth step to southern victory is to continue to appeal to all side of the coalition.

In the south-east my experience is that the voter on the doorstep is still well disposed to Labour and does recognise what we have achieved already. The only difference to the periods before other elections since 1997 is that they have started to take the idea of a Conservative victory seriously and that is both a threat to us, as we can no longer be certain of their vote, but also an opportunity, because it means they are now looking for the beef behind Cameron’s proposals and he is coming up short.

It is true that the next election will be won and lost in the south. Even if we win sufficient seats everywhere else to command a majority if we don’t hold our ‘target’ seats in the south-east outside London we could find ourselves in government but not in power. This is the time to get behind Gordon and the leadership, to stay focussed and to expose the thinness of Tory thinking.