The Labour Party has set itself on the march toward political oblivion. If it does not think very, very carefully about its next few steps, the party will soon find that voters are only too willing to aid it along its way in an autumn general election. I believe there are three steps that need to be taken in order to maintain Labour’s hopes of forming a government anytime soon.

The party’s first step should be to accept that the first responsibility of an MP is to the voters, and not to the political activists who shout the loudest. A political programme that might meet with approval from political activists, as well as the far-Left groups who now associate themselves with the Labour leadership, is likely to divorce Labour from the hopes and fears of ordinary voters across the country. The electoral consequences of this could be dire.

We gained our first idea of how this divorce might play out at the EU referendum. The official pro-EU line adopted by Labour was opposed by 71 per cent of voters in Mansfield, 69 per cent in Hartlepool and Stoke, and 62 per cent in Barking and Dagenham. Who is to say that these voters, largely working-class men and women who our party was founded to represent, will not be tempted to desert Labour the next time we ask for their votes?

Here’s where we need to take a second step back towards electability. At this week’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, MPs were quick to blame Jeremy Corbyn for the outcome of the EU referendum. I believe they were wrong to do so.

Large numbers of working-class voters, whose votes were key to deciding the outcome of the referendum, will have backed Leave in response to the winds of globalisation that have swept their communities over the past decade. These winds were made to feel even more ferocious once Tony Blair and Gordon Brown opened up our country’s borders to Eastern Europe in 2004.

Jeremy Corbyn totally understands the need to protect those groups whose lives have been battered by these winds. Both he and I share a desire to reshape Western economies so that they deliver fairer outcomes for those groups.

But working-class voters have made it clear that they will only take Labour seriously again if the party owns up to its role in encouraging the unprecedented changes we have seen in the size and composition of our population, and then pledges to do something about it. A first demand here is to insist on full control of our borders, so that we can begin implementing a more balanced immigration policy that works not just for the middle classes but for all of us.

A third step requires Jeremy to stand up to the political activists setting upon MPs and their staff outside their constituency offices. Following the tragic death of Jo Cox MP, Jeremy needs to make it clear that he will not tolerate such behaviour.

But Jeremy can’t change, and he won’t change. I therefore voted yesterday for a new leader, as did an overwhelming majority of Labour MPs. If the party decides against electing a new leader, the Parliamentary Labour Party might move swiftly to elect its own leader here in the House of Commons, with Jeremy leading the party in the country.

Frank Field is the Labour MP for Birkenhead and chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee.