General election: Battle for the soul of Labour after crushing election defeat
Labour faces a battle over the direction it goes in and the tone it takes in its offer to the country.
Saturday 14 December 2019 08:23, UK
Reassuring voters that your party leader will not be in his job for long after a general election is a novel campaign tactic for any candidate.
But for one prospective Labour MP, it was clearly seen as a necessary step to win support from households uneasy about Jeremy Corbyn.
Some may question the ethics, but looking at the results overnight, the strategy seems sound enough.
The candidate in question won their seat.
Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile will walk out of his job after leading the party through a "process of reflection" following this thumping defeat.
The Conservatives' rapid Brexit timetable means there will be no immediate time for Labour to lick its wounds though.
Boris Johnson's Brexit deal will be put before MPs in the coming days, with some suggesting the crucial vote could come just 48 hours before Christmas.
Despite the overnight drubbing, many in Labour will want the party to be doing its job as the opposition and scrutinising the Tory plans fully.
The break-neck speed laid out for agreeing a trade deal with the EU will also mean plenty of political meat for MPs to get their teeth into as the New Year unfolds.
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All the more reason for a solid succession plan to be mapped out by Labour well in advance.
A sharp spring back to the political centre seems unlikely though.
Jeremy Corbyn's four years at the helm have seen the political infrastructure of Labour re-shaped in an attempt to secure his legacy.
The party's powerful governing body, the National Executive Committee, is now dominated by left-wingers.
Reforms to how Labour's leadership contests are run also make it more likely that the successor will be fully signed up to the current trajectory.
Then there is the symbolic role Jeremy Corbyn could take on.
His desire for a painless resignation may see him become something of a father figure to the party - the man responsible for re-casting Labour as a socialist force once again.
Against that backdrop, his successor may not jettison too many of the radical policies that characterised the party's last two manifestos.
But that doesn't mean there won't be a battle over the direction Labour goes in and the tone it takes in its offer to the country.
Brexit will remain part of this debate but the contours will be broader and concern whether Labour has become too metropolitan and too detached from voters in its traditional heartlands.
The crumbling of the so-called "red wall" of Leave-voting Labour seats in the Midlands and the North will lead to calls for the party to turn itself into a more socially conservative, patriotic and even eurosceptic movement.
Labour Leavers point to the party winning student seats like Canterbury while losing heartland areas such as Bolsover as proof that the offering is out of kilter.
Expect to hear Northern MPs and future leadership contenders like Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey hinting at this direction of travel - bolstered by a desire among many for Labour to elect its first ever female leader.
That may be a hard-sell to the overwhelmingly pro-EU membership though who would rather see an out-and-out Remainer like Keir Starmer or Emily Thornberry take the reins.
The challenge for the next leader will be holding these two flanks of Labour together - fusing the popular radicalism of the last four years to the more traditional political bedrock the party has historically set its stall on.
The binary nature of the Brexit choice and the shadow it has cast over politics recently has made that an impossible task for Jeremy Corbyn over the last three years.
Now stripped of any influence over Brexit by a solid Tory majority, Labour has an opportunity to get its own house in order.