THE best way to continue getting wrong answers is to go on asking the wrong questions and little confirms this dilemma better than Labour’s potential leaders.

Labour was all but wiped out in Scotland at the hands of a party that presented itself convincingly as a better bet to combat austerity. It dropped votes in target seats in England and Wales to Ukip, the Tories and Greens. Ukip, Greens and SNP worked a similar seam that Labour had let down its core supporters who should look elsewhere to plug the gap.

The obvious conclusion is that, however many votes Labour plundered from the entrails of the decomposing Liberal Democrats, it lost nearly as many from the heart of working class. Where Labour shed support to the Tories, it is worth examining the possibility that presumed hostility to big business could have played a role.

But having accepted theoretical plausibility, does anyone seriously believe that erstwhile Labour voters deserted the party in droves to the SNP, Ukip and Greens because they were disgusted by Ed Miliband’s supposed hostility to business?

Andy Burnham, who reputedly wears the crown of the trade union movement’s favoured son, thinks that there is a case for business, believing that Labour doesn’t love it any more.

“When did they last hear a Labour politician say thank you for what they do, for employing our constituents and investing in our communities?Nowhere near enough is the answer to that,” the shadow health secretary told an audience at the City of London offices of business services transnational corporation Ernst and Young.

It may come as a shock to some people, but employers don’t set up operations in order to provide jobs or help communities. Their underlying goal is profits, which is why they insist on national and local government assistance, from tax breaks to direct grants, and they are not averse to demanding pay and conditions sacrifices from staff as the price for not upping sticks and seeking fresh pastures, with a new set of incentives elsewhere in the European Union.

Similarly, Burnham’s description of business’s function — “creating jobs and wealth” — is way off the mark. Wealth in the form of profits is not created by capitalists’ speculative investment but by the labour power of workers who are not paid the full price for the added value they produce.

Aside from this basic truth, why is Burnham competing with Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall for the prize of most business-friendly Labour leadership candidate? It’s not about persuading individual chief executives to vote Labour. They aren’t that numerous and most vote Tory by conviction.

It could be that the Labour hopefuls aspire to the tens of millions of pounds in corporate donations that the Tories have received in recent years. That’s at least a possibility, given that Labour’s distaste for finance from the trade union movement has become more distinct, even while it relied so heavily on it for its general election campaign.

However, the most likely explanation is that all the candidates are genuinely committed to the capitalist system and see no viable alternative to the profit motive as the engine of society — with the possible exception of the NHS.

This is a depressing scenario, but far better to appreciate the scale of the problem than be seduced by dreams that progressive change under Labour leadership is just around the corner.