The former opposition leader cannot have been looking forward to the release last week of a comprehensive review of Labor's loss at the federal election in May, where most commentators believed they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Former cabinet minister Craig Emerson and former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill conducted the review, including face-to-face or telephone interviews with more than 120 individuals, including MPs, former MPs and candidates, and 800 submissions from ALM members and the general public.

As the face of the defeat, Mr Shorten was never going to fare well.

In the end, the review authors found Mr Shorten was an unpopular leader who, despite seeing off two prime ministers in Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull during his time as opposition leader, failed to convince voters of Labor's policy agenda, particularly in relation to tax cuts.

Of all that, the "unpopular" tag will sting the most. Nobody wants to be unpopular, but especially a politician.

And Mr Shorten's long history in the union movement suggests he had the common touch at some stage in his career; perhaps federal politics eroded it.

But, whatever the truth, Mr Shorten is an easy scapegoat for Labor's defeat and - as many failed leaders have learned before him - he'll just have to cop it.

That doesn't make it right, though.

A more honest appraisal from the review would argue that Labor didn't lose a single election on May 19; it actually lost 77. That was the number of seats won by Coalition candidates that allowed Scott Morrison to remain as PM.

Looking at it that way, though, the good news for Labor is that it also won 68 elections. Just five more and there would have been no need for a review.

Leading into any election, the majority of seats are not really up for grabs. Most are safe seats that neither side of politics will spend much time wooing.

The election is actually decided by a few seats in the middle, and in May it was mining - including Labor's muddled responses to Adani - that was the key issue in many of those. A clearer message for Queensland voters might have made all the difference.

The May result was not a good one for Labor, but nor was it a landslide for the Coalition. Only the losers do reviews, though.