Just before Christmas Johann Lamont was elected as the new leader of the Scottish Labour party. Every party member and sympathiser wishes her and Anas Sarwar all the best as they seek to lead Labour back to victory in Scotland. But as with the 2010 leadership election, the manner in which the Scottish leadership was decided risks handing our political opponents ammunition, while also causing internal disunity.

While Lamont won among MSPs, MEPs and MPs, and overwhelmingly among Labour affiliates, her main rival Ken Macintosh won comfortably among Labour members in Scotland. Although Lamont’s overall victory margin of 11.5 per cent was larger than that won by Ed Miliband in 2010, the fact remains that the leaders of the Labour party in both the UK and Scotland did not attract the most votes from members of the Labour party.

This fact presents a clear problem for Labour. Leadership elections are about many things, a key one of which is empowering the newly elected leader by giving them a mandate to lead. The day after the elections of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, voters could wake up with some sense of roughly what direction their respective parties were choosing to go in.

Our electoral college has the potential to do this (and has done so in the past), but only provided that all three sections back the same candidate. Any other outcome creates a massive hostage to fortune by immediately proclaiming that the party leader is not the first choice of an important section of the Labour party and its supporters.

To see the real-life effects of this problem we only need to look at how the party has interacted with trade unions since September 2010. Labour members overwhelmingly backed the public sector strikes of November 30, while the party leadership conspicuously failed to do so. Although party leaders rarely back strike action, the repeated attacks on Ed Miliband from the Tories and media owing to the method of his election as leader can only have added to the pressure on him to distance himself from trade unions at precisely the time they are most vital.

Not only does our electoral college system undermine our leaders, it therefore damages precisely the sections of the party whose votes lead to their victory. Faced with inevitable political pressure to move away from a section of the party which is seen as putting them in office, the electoral college both highlights internal differences within the party and also exacerbates them.

This situation would be a problem even if there was not an alternative to it. As it stands, however, there are at least two. Moving to a simple one-member-one-vote system would not only simplify the current system, but would make every member of the electorate’s vote count equally. It would also clearly provide the winner with a mandate for their time in office.

Following the recent success of the national primary for the French Socialist presidential candidate, my own personal preference would be for a national primary. Nearly three million people participated in this two-round primary, and only Socialist party supporters or sympathisers could vote. The result? Huge levels of public engagement, a strong mandate for the candidate and a strengthening of the party organisation.

The nature of Lamont’s victory will likely not be as problematic for Labour as that of Ed Miliband is seen as being. But as someone who wants the Labour leader, whoever it is, to be in as strong a position with the public as possible, I can’t help but hope that the 2011 Scottish leadership election is the last one we hold under the electoral college.

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Jonny Medland is a member of Progress and Labour activist. He tweets @jonnymedland

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Photo: synaesthesia