This is the bleakest midwinter of Labour’s misfortunes. Those emotionally invested in the hope of a future Labour government have never faced such dark days. Ahead lie years of a hegemonic Conservative era, free to do what they like in pursuit of driving the state below the size of anything attempted by Margaret Thatcher.

A hundred days in, Corbyn has shown he is no Dave Spart. But what now? | Hugh Muir Read more

Wherever Labour people gather to discuss how to break out of the vice tightening around the party, answers fail amid sighs of utter despair. The brutality of politics was never more evident than on the massacre of 7 May. By two minutes past 10, putative chancellor and foreign secretary were ejected from politics, the leader cast into the role of catastrophic failure.

By nature, Labour people are optimists, believing in progress, often against the odds, trusting in the human ability to improve our condition and shape society well, and not just for the sharp-elbowed. Optimism is in our DNA. I have always found some political project I can believe will work. Right now, for the first time in my life, I see none. Ipsos Mori says Labour needs a 13-point lead by 2020 to scrape a win.

Before considering Jeremy Corbyn, any Labour leader would have faced this electoral abyss: Scotland has gone and 2018 boundary changes will abolish a host of Labour seats. In the 94 English seats Labour must win, four out of five new votes need to come from Tory voters.

David Cameron’s disgraceful gerrymanders, not just on boundaries, include a new-style electoral register, knocking off millions of mostly Labour voters. Add in his undebated cut to Short money financing of political parties, which damages Labour most, his high-handed curtailing of trade union funds to the party, and his curbing the Lords’ powers – and this is an anti-democratic coup. Whoever its leader, Labour would look stricken.

Eruptions across Europe are crushed here by our electoral system. People despise the dishonesty of politicians who don’t say exactly what they think – yet compulsory compromise is written into first-past-the-post, forcing politics to fit inside two fractiously broad coalitions. Those suggesting Labour should split between its socialist and social democratic wings delude themselves. In 1983 the SDP was crushed, less than 3% behind Labour in votes but with just six seats to Labour’s 209. Yes, it keeps out fascists and fanatics, but at the high cost of squashing new ideas, unless forced through the meat-grinders of the two big parties. Look what happened to Ukip.

Corbyn says polling party members to shape policy is here to stay Read more

Compromise with the voters will be far harder with Corbyn’s pledge this week to let party members decide policy. Before the surge of £3 pro-Corbyn arrivals, Labour membership was already well to the left of party policy at Westminster. Professors Tim Bale and Paul Webb’s ESRC research on parties always found Labour and Tory members more extreme than their leadership.

Does Cameron follow his party members’ views: 71% would leave the EU today, while 67% would stop foreign aid? He has their strong support for cutting all business taxes, top tax rates and for abolishing green subsidies for wind and solar – but they want deeper welfare cuts.

The 1% who join parties are not like other voters. Both memberships are far from the centre, Tory members even further away than Labour’s. May’s law of curvilinear disparity shows voters are more centrist than party activists, and MPs are closer to voters than are their party members. Labour will only win when its members decide it’s worth compromising to oust the Tories from power, as they finally did after their fourth miserable defeat in 1992. Then they can have electoral reform, and then they can split if they wish.

Power to the party is not the same as power to the people. Far from a “gentler politics”, the Corbyn faction’s machinations to control party levers cause internal strife that detracts and distracts from the serious job of opposition. The running of the party is shambolic – few press releases, policies or campaigns. Appalling legislation passes without the public knowing, for lack of an effective Labour voice.

But those who oppose Corbyn make their own errors. Talk of a social democratic breakaway lacks not only a standard-bearer of any weight: far worse, they have no standard to bear. Beyond a certainty that Corbyn can’t win, what are the great issues to justify a split? Staying in the EU and Nato were the great 1981 dividers, but those are now Labour policy. Trident renewal is no rallying cry. Anti-anti-austerity is not a good look. Public sector “reform” is a dead duck, with the sector hewn down.

Peter Hyman, former Tony Blair adviser, is the latest to call for a split. But like the other would-be splitters, his call for a “new dynamic political force” and “fresh thinking” offers labels, not policies. They say neither Tory cuts nor the “big state”, but a “leaner more agile empowering state”. Hyman wants “facing up to hard choices” on migration, environment, terrorism and welfare while “genuinely believing in social justice and economic prosperity”. Well, yes to all that – but what, exactly, is different from existing Labour policies?

The unpalatable answer is that policies matter less than the personality, performance and persuasiveness of leaders. Credibility on the economy and security boils down to this: does he/she look like a prime minister? Snap judgments are made. Corbyn’s image may by now be sealed for ever with too many. He’s honest – but he’s no prime minister. From no national anthem to no shooting “Jihadi John”, he doesn’t fit the template and never can.

These past 100 days of his leadership, I have tried to believe Corbyn can fire up people beyond already left-leaners. The vitriol of the press has been shocking. But it’s been like a child who’s a bit too old still desperately trying to believe in Father Christmas. It strains credulity. Nonetheless, as Angela Eagle said stiffly on Sunday’s Andrew Marr show when asked: “He’s the leader we’ve got.”

Ejection is fanciful, unless the membership changes its mind. Split is impossible. In which case MPs and shadow ministers would be well advised to get on with making a better fist of opposing this monstrous government: shine the light on the Conservatives, not on Labour’s travails.

Next year brings the referendum, and with it a vituperative Tory schism. Labour should gain by emerging the more serious on Britain’s future in Europe. But hope is thin on the ground this midwinter.