So can Labour ever win again? This is what three decades watching politics has taught me

Boris Johnson’s invasion of its territory raises painful questions for Labour. The prime minister will play on the centre ground, so the opposition must do battle there too, writes Andrew Grice

Related: Former Labour MP Mary Creagh calls Jeremy Corbyn a '‘preening narcissist' (AFP/Getty)

Can Labour ever win again? I remember the question being asked in the 1980s during the party’s anguished debate over its future. Some Labour figures thought it was finished. Yet, eventually, it bounced back, winning a landslide in 1997 and retaining power for 13 years.

After moving into the Westminster village in 1982, I had a ringside seat as Labour returned slowly from the wilderness. Now Labour again faces an existential crisis, and no divine right to survive as a serious force.

Boris Johnson’s invasion of its territory raises a painful question for Labour: is it still the party of the working class founded almost 120 years ago?

I sense that the scale of the crisis is underestimated by many in the party, including some of the contenders to succeed Jeremy Corbyn. Labour has lost four elections running. In the 1980s, it started to put itself back on track after two defeats.

Even then, it was a long, tortuous road. It required someone on the left, Neil Kinnock, to break with the hard left and drag the party back towards the centre. At times, progress was crab-like. As he tried to wean his party off unilateral nuclear disarmament, I asked Kinnock whether he supported unilateral or multilateral action. “Both,” he replied. It was a messy staging post, and he got there in the end.

With crucial backing from the trade unions, who (unlike today) accepted that Labour must change, Kinnock also revamped policy on the economy, public services and Europe. He expelled Militant supporters, some of whom were later drawn back by the magnet of Corbyn’s leadership. The contrast with Corbyn’s reluctance to discipline those accused of antisemitism is marked.

Kinnock never got the credit he deserved. He resigned after his second election defeat in 1992. Labour’s slick communications again “won” the campaign, but as one key player told me: “We have had enough brilliant defeats.” It took another heavy dose of modernisation, under Tony Blair, to complete the journey.

The lesson I draw is that Labour must convince its lost voters, notably in the north and midlands, that it has got their message. This will require a few big, symbolic policy changes, not an A-Z telephone directory of policy.

To regain economic credibility, Labour’s programme must be properly costed (unlike its ever-lengthening list of promises this month). Labour needs a coherent, overarching theme running through its agenda like the letters on a stick of rock to rival anything Johnson’s savvy Vote Leave team cook up at the next election. Memo to Labour: don’t rush out a raft of new policies aimed at the missing millions; Johnson will steal your best ideas.

Labour should call a truce in its class war, which doesn’t impress aspirational voters. It should acknowledge that Blair got some things right – effective communications, for example – rather than automatically reject everything he did. Labour should recognise that Johnson will play on the centre ground, so it must do battle there, rather than let him dominate it.

The party should not dismiss this month’s contest as a one-off “Brexit election” which means that Corbynism should outlive Corbyn. The nasty factionalism of the Corbyn regime must end; the soft and hard left must meet in the middle. Labour can no longer afford the luxury of fighting itself, and must focus on the real enemy. It should recognise that the left of centre parties across the world are losing to nationalist populists, and learn their lessons. Labour will not regain office until it is seen as a patriotic party, trusted with the nation’s security.

Above all, Labour needs a strong leader who is prepared to tell their party some home truths, who looks like a PM-in-waiting in an era that will become even more presidential with Johnson at the helm. Corbyn never looked like one; with hindsight, his “brilliant defeat” in 2017 was against a very weak opponent in Theresa May.

I’ve also followed the Liberal Democrats closely over the years; I once had the dubious honour of being the only journalist to turn up at a Lib Dem press conference. For a while, this spring, it looked as if the resurgent Lib Dems might break the mould from the centre without launching a new party. Then they broke themselves with a rash pledge to revoke Article 50 and foolhardy decision to hand the prime minister the election he desired.

Although some Labour centrists might be tempted to form a new party, Change UK’s chastening experience is not a good advert. Its original 11 MPs are no longer in the Commons; the party itself was over before Christmas. Another new party would lack a vital ingredient: a credible leader.

So Corbyn’s critics will probably stay and fight from within, for now at least. Like Labour itself, they face a very long haul.