LONDON — The British Labour Party faces the biggest crisis in its history, bigger than 1983 when it polled less than 28 percent of the popular vote and won only 209 seats in the House of Commons. Numerically, the result of the June 8 general election may not be quite as bad for Labour as it was 34 years ago. And, unlike in 1983, a clutch of despairing former Labour cabinet ministers have not chosen to found an unelectable fringe party. But the damage to the party’s prospects today is far deeper.

In 1983, Labour moderates rightly believed that once the extent of the electoral disaster became plain, there would be a slow revival of enthusiasm for electable policies and an electable leadership. Indeed, some of us in the party were preparing the ground for the counterrevolution even before voting day. For example, when I spoke in my Birmingham constituency, I explicitly rejected policies like nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from what was then the European Economic Community and wholesale nationalization — key elements in Labour’s 1983 party manifesto.

Today, there is little sign that Labour will soon make its way out of the wilderness. According to some predictions based on recent polling, the party could be left with as few as 157 seats in Parliament (from its 2015 election total of 232). Members on the opposition backbenches of Parliament who should be mapping out the road to recovery show little inclination to lead the way. Sensible Labour policies — more affordable housing and greater investment in the health service — are obscured by the party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s displays of inadequacy and incompetence. Conservative newspapers regurgitate his closest supporters’ past associations with extreme organizations and bizarre ideas.

In 1983, the Labour Party suffered from three related, but transitory, problems. The first was Tony Benn, whose fantasy politics and messianic egoism appealed to romantics, and who was only narrowly defeated in his bid to become the party’s deputy leader in 1981. The second was Michael Foot, the party leader, who — though a distinguished writer and cabinet minister — was wholly unsuited to political leadership. The third was the Militant Tendency, a group of Trotskyite infiltrators who, in Labour’s name, won control of the Liverpool City Council and tried, almost always without success, to undermine mainstream Labour members of Parliament.