At Saturday’s Fabian Society ‘Next Left’ conference, General Secretary Sunder Katwala remarked that Labour’s defeat felt akin to bereavement for many of us. We all had a chuckle, but he was far from wrong – our candidates and activists have been in campaign mode for months, giving up most of their spare time in the name of a Labour government and a brighter future. Things had looked bad for a couple of years – but as the polls narrowed and the campaign machines roared into life, many of us hoped as we had never dared to hope before that this was salvageable, that we could win, that we could still deliver. And maybe we could have – but we didn’t – and losing that hope, that future really hit Labour people hard.

I haven’t changed my view that a Labour win would have been the best thing for the country – the timing and precision of public spending cuts, the environment and our position in Europe, to name but three areas of concern – even though it would not have been the best thing for Labour. But it doesn’t really matter what I think – as so many of the speakers at Saturday’s conference reminded us, we lost, and we lost badly, and we can’t hold the electorate in contempt for that. We failed. It felt bad, it still does – but now I feel as though I have sped through the stages of bereavement, right through to hope. At this point, we have the opportunity to take one eye off governance, and to really turn ourselves into the movement for positive change that we believe we can be, and to turn that into something eminently electable by the time we reach the next general election – hopefully in time for the people who need us as much as we need them. (more…)