If it wasn’t for the Labour Party, we’d probably have a Labour government

The time for Labour reform has gone. The time has come for Labour’s reinvention, writes Phil Wilson

The polls make for bad reading for Keir Starmer (Getty Images)

I first campaigned for Labour in 1979. Between then and 1997 I often wondered if Labour was actually serious about winning. Then 13 years of Labour government came along and I found we were serious – for a time.

After 2010 and the election of the wrong brother as Labour leader and then Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, the party’s memory banks were switched off. We forgot how to win and how bad it was to lose. However, it is fair to say losing was hardwired into the Labour Party because we are so good at it.

The situation became intolerable under Jeremy Corbyn. His followers wanted to reboot the memory banks with a new past in which it didn’t really matter whether Labour won or lost, it was all the same. It was all bad. Activists trashing Labour’s record in government became a favourite pastime. They helped to make defeats a certainty, because if Labour didn’t believe in the good Labour governments can do, why should the voters?

Under Corbyn, a belief in the country was frowned upon. Labour’s response to the Salisbury poisoning saw to that. Because the Corbyn clan wanted to rewrite the past, it was expunged from memory that Labour won when our belief in Britain was a given. Keir Starmer has needed to restate the obvious on this – with the vast majority of Labour MPs and supporters agreeing: that to wave the union flag isn’t a betrayal of Labour values, but helps to reinstate them. If you don’t believe in Britain, why would you want to govern Britain?

For Corbyn supporters, joining the Labour Party was like joining a spa, where you select a cause like selecting a treatment. After the body and mind are cleansed of, and then closed to, doubt, the supporter leaves feeling good, with the certainty that they are always right. Doing good doesn’t come into it. That would mean a real workout, like, say, winning an election.

The Corbyn worldview thrived on nostalgia. A left-behind time. A time when the pits were still open in Durham, a time so long ago the memories are in black and white. The people of Durham have moved on. It’s the Labour Party, rather than Labour supporters, that has been left behind and people won’t vote for a left-behind party.

All of this has left the Labour brand trashed. The Corbyn era overhangs the Labour Party and casts a long shadow. This is the legacy Keir Starmer has inherited. The drama around the shadow cabinet reshuffle over recent days is nothing more than a kerfuffle compared with what needs to be done. The task ahead is monumental. The time for Labour reform has gone. So has the time to rebuild Labour. The time has come for Labour’s reinvention. Labour needs to dig deep, to re-establish the party’s purpose in a new beginning. Labour has done it before and can do it again. We must feel again the adrenalin of winning.

The voters are looking for an alternative to the Conservatives that they can believe in. A party that offers a vision of the future, not the past. A party that sees opportunity as well as equality as the bedrock to build that future. A party that believes in Britain because we see Britain as a force for good in the world.

The question now for the leader of the Labour Party and his colleagues in the shadow cabinet is: if the Labour Party was to be created in the third decade of the 21st century what would it look like? The obvious answer is: it wouldn’t look like it does today – a party that can engineer a protest but not a government. The world that created the Labour Party has gone, but the Labour Party is still needed because the values we hold are for all time. Our quest is to make them relevant once more for the here and now, not the age of once upon a time.

Phil Wilson was Labour MP for Sedgefield between 2007 and 2019