Get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and all Corbynites if Labour is to survive – Richard Heller

They especially betrayed those most in need of a Labour government, those sick or poor or stressed or otherwise vulnerable, and all the children forced to live like refugees in their own country, dependent on handouts and rations and wearing all their clothes in bed at night.

The Corbyn clique made even Labour loyalists, never mind the wider electorate, believe that the party had become anti-Semitic and in league with terrorists and tyrants. They gave houseroom to cranks and fanatics. They crafted a manifesto which was not so much a programme as a series of letters to Santa Claus.

Jeremy Corbyn and his cabal must quit now after Labour’s election humiliation – The Yorkshire Post says

The kicking needs to be repeated fiercely and often. The Corbynites still control the party and Corbyn wants to linger until the new year. His opponents among surviving Labour MPs should not let him: delay increases the chance of a Corbynite successor to lose the party another election.

Caroline Flint: The voters of South Yorkshire are not “stupid”

To give Labour any hope of recovery, the new leader will have to show that Corbynites have no influence over any part of it. That entails winning a long series of civil wars in local parties, in trade unions and affialated bodies, and over the party organisation and policy apparatus.

He/she will have to create a new means to expel instantly anyone whom a reasonable person might view as an anti-semite or any other kind of hater or an enemy of democracy.

Unelectable Jeremy Corbyn has ruined Labour and must go now – David Blunkett

Those civil wars will produce constitutional and courtroom battles and raucous and bitter personal warfare, abuse and threats of violence. All this is necessary simply to get the Labour horse into the starting gate for 2024, with no guarantee of winning the race.

So far no contender looks the equal of Neil Kinnock, who reconquered and re-cast the Labour party after a similar catastrophe in 1983. But he surprised friend and foe, and perhaps someone else will do the same.

Kinnock is a reminder that even “normal” Labour parties with attractive leaders and plausible policies regularly lose elections. Corbyn’s successor will have to provide new reasons to win back the voters who deserted the party – and more.

He/she cannot rely on Boris Johnson doing that job for them, although I still believe he will contribute. Labour can certainly enjoy making him take full responsibility for Brexit and all its consequences. For now, it does not need its own Brexit policy, certainly not a commitment to Remain imposed by Londoners who have never tried to understand why so many Labour voters elsewhere wanted to Leave.

Even without a second independence referendum, the new leader will have to give Scots new motives to vote for the party as part of the United Kingdom.

However the new leader, when they are eventually in place, would be wise to avoid the endorsement of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. He/she still needs the commitment and passion of those in the party who wanted something better than New Labour.

They need to be uncoupled from Corbyn and his cheerleading claque Momentum (which would be more aptly named Stasis). He/she should therefore appeal to all those who want the Labour party to achieve something for other people, not serve as an echo chamber for themselves.

The new leader could do something totally radical and tell the truth to the British people.

In or out of the EU, whatever the final terms of Brexit, they face colossal tasks at home and abroad. To name only a few: meeting the national demand for health and social care, and housing; relieving family poverty; creating viable well-paid jobs in a global economy where billions of people now produce more output more cheaply than the average British worker; living sustainably and combatting climate change; facing down Putin and confronting the far greater menace of Xi Jinping’s China.

Achieving these tasks entails huge adjustments in the way all of us live. But if Boris Johnson maintains in government the feckless, shallow approach he took on every issue in the election, Labour still has much to gain from becoming the Serious Party.

Richard Heller was chief of staff to Denis Healey and Gerald Kaufman.