As Boris Johnson takes up his mantle of “king of the North”, Labour signals the start of (another) leadership race. Well, I want to be one of the first to throw my hat out of the ring. Neil Kinnock, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn – each in different ways demonstrated why leader of the opposition is the hardest job in politics. The current holder is neither the evil villain nor the martyred saint of factional casting, just someone trying to do a very difficult job.

But the next one does need to do better. Much better. They need to recognise the varied qualities the job requires, so that even if they can’t deliver on all of them, they can surround themselves with those who can. And above all they need to have a story that inspires hope throughout the country: not a “vision”, which sounds great but can’t be measured, but a clear narrative about why we lost and how we can win.

We did not have a credible response to people’s pain – not only deindustrialisation, but the fears associated with globalisation, technology and financial speculation

The election was about Brexit. Brexit is not about economics, but it is rooted in economic realities. The map of Labour’s defeat shows that the geography of loss matches the contours of economic despair. My constituency, Newcastle Central, has some of the poorest postcodes in the country, with many traditional working-class areas and slashed public services. But we also have growing digital, health, education and leisure sectors and a rejuvenated Quayside. The swing from Labour to Conservatives was less than the national average.

Just a few miles away, double-digit swings handed the Tories seats that had been Labour since the 1930s, where productive industry is little more than a folk memory. In these communities the Tories’ traditional message used to be, basically, “suck it up or go south”. Johnson had a different message: “I know you are hurting and I am with you. The reason why you are hurting is because politicians are blocking Brexit. I will get Brexit done.” A simple message in plain language that appealed to deep-rooted emotions and had some basis in people’s experience.

By contrast, we had a manifesto crammed with transformative policies that people didn’t believe in. We did not have a credible response to people’s pain – not only the deindustrialisation of the past, but also the fears associated with globalisation, technology and financial speculation. They all create anxiety about where good jobs will come from. The climate crisis too: some fear it will damage their lives; others that they and their communities will be made to bear the costs, in terms of the loss of good jobs.

Our policies seemed to be about a better division of the pie, when people didn’t believe in the pie any more. While there was a plan in the manifesto for green growth, innovation and transformed productivity – I know, I wrote parts of it – by the end of the campaign it was totally overshadowed by a huge Christmas tree of policy promises. In the northern heartlands in particular, people want a return to a productive work that is part of something meaningful – ending the threat of the climate crisis, curing diseases, restoring broad-based prosperity to our country.

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I want to hear our next leader talk with confidence and credibility not about redistribution or even “predistribution”, but about how we will put people in charge of their own economic productivity. How we will make working people the wealth producers, who can decide what to do with their earnings: control over the means of production for the 21st century.

But for the next leader to speak credibly about the economy, they must be trusted. Corbyn’s brand was damaged by old stories of association with the IRA and lack of support for the armed forces – everyone in the north-east knows at least one veteran. But confidence was ultimately lost because he was unable to speak clearly on two critical issues: Brexit and racism, in this case antisemitism. They are very different issues: one complex on which people of goodwill can disagree, the other a cancer that has to be rooted out of our party and society. But what they had in common was our apparent equivocation. People will not trust a party whose leader appears unable to make up their mind about critical political and moral issues.

Neither Brexit nor racism are going anywhere. And already there are calls for the next leader to use one to neuter the other. Patriotism and wealth creation do not have to mean racism and isolationism. They can mean solidarity and productive industry. These were at the heart of the Labour movement in the north-east. The next leader would do well to put them at the heart of our party.

• Chi Onwurah is Labour MP for Newcastle Central and the shadow minister for industrial strategy