Last week marked Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s first 100 days: a yardstick of political leadership originally popularised by Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s but more relevant than ever in a digital age of rolling news cycles, where voters’ views on political leaders quickly crystallise. Three months on, Labour still doesn’t look like a party aiming for government.

Recent history has shown that, in order to win, Labour needs to address its perceived weaknesses: fears that it is fiscally irresponsible, a soft touch on welfare, and, more recently, out of touch on immigration. While this is necessary, it is not sufficient: the party also needs to offer the country a positive vision – one that is intellectually coherent and, more importantly, that people can relate to in their lives.

No leader could make more than fledgling progress on the long road to electability in 100 days. But Corbyn’s first three months leave the impression that he does not even see winning an election as his primary task, let alone developing a gameplan that could achieve it. His most enthusiastic announcements have focused on process, not ideas: he wants to give Labour’s recently swelled ranks of members – further to the left of the country than ever before – greater control over party policy. Corbyn has taken over at the helm of a political party – and he is busy transforming it into a social movement. Usually the process works in reverse.

Corbyn’s own beliefs – on the role of the state, the economy, international relations, the nature of work – feel as though they have barely been modified since the 1970s. In his favour is a sense that he is a steadfast, even stubborn, man of principle.

But dogma has a habit of being unyielding, and Corbyn shows few signs of being able to develop fresh responses to a world that has changed out of recognition since his formative political impulses of the late 70s: what to do about the growing influence of Islamic State, the ethics of gene editing or the challenges that technology presents to issues as diverse as employment or transport. In his favour – and one that has yet to be properly tested with the electorate – is that he appears to have a degree of authenticity that some will warm to in an age of mediated, highly-spun politics.

Corbyn is a symptom, not the source, of the malaise at the heart of the Labour party. He won the leadership partly because other candidates, from the soft left to the right, struggled to articulate what Labour is for in 2015. Peter Hyman and Marc Stears have contributed to this critical debate in this paper. Both, in their own ways, are right: Hyman that the project cannot simply be about recreating New Labour; Stears that it should have something to say about the salient issue of the 21st century – economic injustice. But what is most striking is how little the debate has moved on since 2010.

No one in the party seems to be able to articulate the questions that Labour should be asking, let alone producing answers to; nor to be speaking to research that suggests that Labour lost in 2015 because voters felt it was a party whose measures targeted the very top and bottom, but which had little to say to those in the middle. Does Labour even want to speak to that constituency, and, if so, in what language. For the past five years, it has said too little, too rarely.

The starting point for Labour’s renewal must be the questions that will be at the forefront of people’s minds over the next 10 years or so. As Stears has set out, the next decade will herald important social and economic shifts that bring huge opportunities, but also risks.

To do anything about them Labour will need not just technocratic policy but also the ability to relate these macro shifts to the experiences of real families.

What will happen to the 50-year-old woman forced to give up work to care for her mother because there’s no state support? What do employment rights mean to the growing number of people generating work from online platforms (in the so-called “gig economy”)? What of the prospects of graduates leaving university with thousands of pounds of debt, able to find only minimum-wage jobs in sectors, such as retail and care, that offer poor progression prospects?

What about the life chances of children in inner-city schools taught by an endless string of supply teachers because their school can’t find permanent staff? What will Labour say about the national emergency that is housing: both for those caught and exploited in the rental market, and those priced out of buying their own home?

New Labour had the benefit of governing in a time of plenty, as receipts poured in to the public purse. So, what does a fiscally responsible centre-left party have to offer on these issues that is plausible, and distinctive?

Labour remains locked in a discourse dominated by well-meaning but lofty abstraction: radical devolution, relational public services, restoring the contributory principle, punitive action toward the top 1%.

Some of this makes sense but it does not constitute an agenda that relates sufficiently to people’s lives – how people work, how they’re housed, how they care for their family, how their children are schooled, how safe their streets are. Devolution in our over-centralised state is to be welcomed, but that it is being talked up as the platform for Labour renewal is surely a symptom of a dearth of ideas.

These questions go to the heart of what it means to be a political party in the 21st century. In recent months those from the party’s left and right have mourned the passing of the popular movement Labour was when it was founded in the early 20th century.

None have yet articulated what it would mean to recreate a similarly significant popular movement today.

Where does Labour go from here? If Corbyn’s social movement is not built with Number 10 in sight, then what are his goals? He seems almost as interested in internal Labour politics as he is in national politics.

The temptation for Labour moderates meanwhile is to launch straight into a tactical debate – should they stay or should they go? This is understandable. But there is a prior question they must first answer: what is Labour for? More than five years after the Labour party left government, the answer feels less clear than ever.