We shouldn’t be opening the year debating Labour’s internal structures, its personalities, its machinations. What should we talking about? Take your pick. How communities are being put at risk by the Tories’ cuts to flood defences? How the government’s tax and benefit policies are projected to cut the incomes of the poorest by up to 8% over this parliament, as well as hitting middle-income families? How so many of the nation’s youth are being robbed of a comfortable present and future? How Britain’s burgeoning self-employed lack security, or how our older citizens are not getting the quality care services they deserve? How the government’s slavish devotion to Saudi Arabia’s ruling fanatics is a threat to the national security of this country? We could go on. Anything but this, basically.

Of course the media are partly to blame, though I scarcely see the point complaining about it. If the British press wasn’t overwhelmingly hostile to a Labour leader who opposed the status quo, then it wouldn’t be the British press. If the British press really could just brainwash the public into thinking what media moguls wanted them to believe, we might as well give up. The dysfunctional relationship between the Labour leadership and the broader parliamentary Labour party (PLP) – inevitably exploited by the media – is something that can be addressed. All Labour leaders reshuffle their top team: but media-savvy Labour opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, such as Michael Dugher, have capably framed any changes as a “revenge reshuffle”. The focus here, of course, has been the plight of shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn. After Dugher’s sacking this morning, there has been an extraordinary show of dissent as shadow cabinet ministers have rallied behind him. Their aim? To make any change in personnel as politically costly as possible.

When, say, Tony Blair shifted Robin Cook from foreign secretary over differences in foreign policy in 2001 – which would later erupt when the latter resigned over Iraq less than two years later – it was not framed as “revenge”. There is surely no other mainstream party leader in history who has tolerated as much practically open mutiny from his top team as Corbyn. That said, dragging out speculation about a reshuffle was a mistake, distracting focus from the government’s abysmal record. The reshuffle is, in itself, an attempt to correct the chaotic appointment of the shadow cabinet after the leadership election by a team who never thought they would come anywhere close to power.

What is the way out? The position of the Labour leadership is this: Jeremy Corbyn won an absolutely crushing mandate in the most open democratic contest in political history, and therefore has legitimacy to pursue the policies he clearly articulated in the contest. Most of the PLP, on the other hand, believe they have entered a parallel universe of their worst nightmares and just want it all to go away. Mistakes inevitably made by people who never expected power – from the national anthem to shoot-to-kill to poor communication – have fed into the opinion polls.

So here’s the pact that has to be made. The Labour leadership has to focus on developing a coherent domestic policy – including a credible alternative on the economy – that is communicated in a way that people understand. It means building a coalition of middle-income and low-income people. Let’s have policies on everything from building council housing to home ownership; from offering young people a hopeful future and, crucially, all older people a comfortable retirement; from an industrial strategy to create decent skilled jobs to cleverly engaging with issues such as immigration and social security. What differences exist on these issues can be papered over. Obviously foreign policy is important, but the focus now has to be on domestic issues where consensus is easier: except, say, on potentially unifying stances such as attacking the government’s tawdry relationship with the Saudi tyranny. No more debacles like shoot-to-kill or the national anthem. In exchange, the shadow cabinet should accept the mandate of the leader, agree to message discipline so a coherent alternative can be effectively communicated, and stop undermining the legitimacy of the leadership. That’s the agreement that has to be reached. Otherwise the Tories will carry on doing whatever the hell they like, while history will record that it was Labour’s internal war of attrition that made it possible.