In an article for the Guardian, Tony Blair makes the case that the strategy of opposing “Brexit at any cost” would help rather than hinder Labour. He goes as far as to say that even in constituencies that voted heavily leave, Labour MPs should campaign to remain. The party is already in crisis among leave voters – polling in February suggested that only 45% of leave voters who voted Labour in 2015 still back the party. The equivalent figure with remain voters is 15 points higher. Blair’s article, masquerading as a coherent strategy for a Labour victory, is really a blueprint to keep us in the single market, party be damned.

In any case, if you were to try to imagine an intervention that would elicit the most contempt and indignation from the people who are going to decide Labour’s next leader, I don’t think you could do much better. Though he was at pains to underline the fact that he had not “urged tactical voting”, his advice to “make sure that voters know where candidates stand on the Brexit issue before they cast their vote, whether Tory, Lib Dem or Labour” can easily be read as such. The three-time election winner is really deluded enough to believe that making sure people know that voting Conservative is always an option will somehow help the centre left.

Labour has a real Brexit alternative. Now it must get the message to voters | Owen Jones Read more

It’s not just the Blairite wing of the party that’s wrongheaded in its approach to internal Labour politics. Blue Labour, the socially conservative, immigration-sceptic grouping founded by Maurice Glasman and endorsed by everyone from Chuka Umunna to Ed Miliband, has its own blind spots. In November last year, Blue Labour held its annual conference in Manchester. The rhetoric felt like something you’d hear at a fringe Ukip event, rather than a conference where people were trying to think about how Labour could broaden its appeal. The only real “solution” being proposed was to heavily limit immigration. It wasn’t much of a surprise that the small room was only about two-thirds full. If Jeremy Corbyn had been holding a similar event, he could have sold it out for a dozen weekends in a row.

It’s almost as if Corbyn’s critics have forgotten the ease with which he won the two leadership elections. Labour’s recently unveiled policies have been lauded by the left of the party – free school meals for primary pupils, a £10 minimum wage and a pledge to crack down on late payments from big businesses to small ones. These are the kinds of policies that Labour members know they’ll get from Corbyn, and don’t think they’ll get from other factions of the party, whether New or Blue Labour. It’s churlish, too, of his critics to ignore the fact that Labour is the largest party in western Europe.

These factors don’t mean that Corbyn can succeed in a general election, and they definitely don’t mean that he’s popular with floating voters, but they do mean that he and the left of the Labour party have a pretty tight grip over the membership as it is today. Corbyn’s popularity among party members is not exactly waning – a poll last month showed that the current Labour leader is the second most popular ever – only being bested by Clement Attlee. Blair, on the other hand, came sixth.

None of this is intended to excuse Corbyn for his failings. Polling among members might put him in a good position, but if the polling on the general election is right, Labour is due to receive a drubbing on 8 June. It looks as though he will want to stay on, at least temporarily, after that. And if he doesn’t, the left will certainly put forward a successor candidate. Because the MPs in safe seats are more likely to support the leadership, it seems probable that the makeup of the post-election parliamentary Labour party will be more pro-Corbyn than it is at the moment. The take-home for those of us who feel that the left of the party is unlikely to ever be able to win an election is this: a return to normalcy is not guaranteed. Corbyn’s disciples still make up the bulk of the membership.

There needs to be a candidate who will embrace Corbyn’s serious thinking about social justice and the NHS, while also understanding the necessity of pragmatism to be electorally viable. For many leftwing members of the Labour party, Corbyn, and his policy prescriptions, are inspiring. His replacement must able to continue to inspire while also being competent enough to win back Tory voters.

So, from whence comes redemption? At the moment, the field is sparse. Of the candidates from previous leadership races, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper are too strongly associated with the toxicity of New Labour, and Andy Burnham has vacated his seat in frontline politics entirely. Owen Smith’s campaign relied more on him not being Corbyn than any particularly appealing personal qualities. The last thing the party needs is someone who thinks veering to the right will solve all of Labour’s problems (so please, Tony, no more interventions).

Perhaps there is a silver lining for Labour at this election, then: maybe MPs from the 2015 intake, not fiercely loyal to any of the warring factions, will one day be able to save it.