Labour needs a drastic reboot. The Tories may be in existential crisis, desperately flapping around in a rising tide of rightwing populism, but Labour’s hopes of securing the sizeable majority it needs to enact a transformative agenda are uncertain. The Brexit mire has robbed the Corbyn project of its core identity, a sense of insurgency; stripped away its optimistic, idealistic gloss; and suppressed the enthusiasm of Labour’s members and the voters most inspired by its 2017 manifesto. Its desperate, indeed honourable, desire for a Brexit compromise in a painfully fractured nation, to be the party that skilfully transcended the divisions bequeathed by a referendum result three years ago, was remorselessly kicked to death in polling stations last week. If the party’s position was intended to be a Rorschach inkblot in which remainers or leavers could see what they wanted to see, in the end all either saw was a splattered mess.

Corbyn pledges Labour will back referendum on any Brexit deal Read more

It’s clear that Labour is now pivoting to a pro-referendum stance in backing a public vote on any deal parliament agrees. Corbyn privately knows it must be done. While there is some internal resistance within both his machine and the parliamentary party – and it’s easy to empathise with those who fear another referendum – the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, is among those pushing for a decisive shift in political strategy. That will surely succeed – the game is up here – even if there remains no majority in parliament for a referendum, but a political reorientation must be spelt out in primary colours, or the party might as well not bother. The mixed messages from leading figures must cease. When Corbyn eventually makes his big speech committing Labour to a new stance, it should be done with gusto and it should be unequivocal. It should mourn the passing of the party’s heartfelt attempt to bridge a divide made impossible by the Tories’ calamitous mishandling of the process; it should be clear that, left with a choice of no deal or another referendum, no alternative remains; and it should directly appeal to those leavers who have suffered most from Britain’s broken social order with a bold, compelling economic vision.

Another shake-up is surely overdue, too, and that is around the shadow cabinet table. Many of them are barely visible to the public; Corbyn surely needs more big hitters who can refocus the national debate on Labour’s currently marginalised priorities. The first suggestion is Ed Miliband. These column inches used to be filled with my despair over the timidity of that Labour era, but could New Labour ever have seamlessly transitioned to Corbynism? Miliband was the bridge between the two, as he acknowledges himself: a man who had the right diagnosis of Britain’s broken social order, but feared offering a genuinely courageous break with it, a man torn between the radicalism of his father and his time as a New Labour apparatchik. “He’s more leftwing privately than you think,” I was often told by those who knew him at the time, but he became too much of a prisoner of his woefully unambitious shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

After spending the first 18 months after Labour’s 2015 drubbing lost in the wilderness, Miliband has truly flourished. His podcast, Reasons to be Cheerful, has become a fountain of imaginative ideas, from universal basic services to taking on tech giants; he sits on the advisory board of Common Wealth, a dynamic new thinktank focused democratising the economy. He has almost unique name recognition for a politician and cuts a reassuring presence: leaders often have a so-called “minister for the Today programme” – for Tony Blair, it was Mo Mowlam, for Theresa May it’s Michael Gove. It’s a role Miliband could assume for Corbyn. More importantly, he should be given Labour’s environment brief, alongside Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, who has done commendable work developing the party’s green policies. Given the ever-escalating climate emergency – and a growing desire, as evidenced by the continent-wide Green surge in the European elections – for radical action, those foundations must be built on. According to Lord Ashcroft Polls, the number one reason given by Green voters for their choice was that “they had the best policies on issues other than Brexit” – surely speaking to climate change. Someone with Miliband’s national stature fronting a truly radical environmental programme will make it land.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest MP Laura Pidcock. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

There is one hiccup. Six years ago, Miliband referred the Unite union to Police Scotland over allegations of voting irregularities in the campaign by Karie Murphy – a former nurse, then office manager to Labour’s current deputy leader Tom Watson – to become Falkirk’s Labour candidate. Murphy was cleared of any wrongdoing but, as she is now Corbyn’s chief of staff, one can understand misgivings over a Miliband return. But surely strengthening Labour’s position trumps the grievances of the past.

Here’s another suggestion. Laura Pidcock – the North Shields-born 31-year-old, widely seen as a future leader on Labour’s left – has the potential to have the same star power in British politics as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does across the Atlantic. Her all too rare plain-speaking broadcast appearances – full of humanity and righteous fury about the injustices of Tory Britain – could help re-energise those galvanised during the 2017 election campaign. Labour’s insurgent “many versus the few” populism needs new fire: Pidcock could provide it with aplomb. Labour needs to pick new fights with Britain’s hated vested elites and offers radical new policies that transcend the 2017 manifesto: Pidcock could front them.

Labour’s shift of position over Brexit will be painful but it must be convincing or members and voters won’t give the party credit for it. But it should be accompanied by a newly energised, radical prospectus, infused with the same spirit that attracted millions to Corbyn’s party in 2017. Rather than being buffeted by the turmoil, at the mercy of events, Labour must treat the post-election shock as an opportunity for a creative relaunch.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist