Looked at rationally, it makes no sense. Her government is presiding over a crisis in the NHS, a surge in people using food banks and deepening despondency in our schools. Millions of Britons face a pay squeeze as wages stagnate and inflation rises. The burgeoning gig economy is sapping security from work; the housing market is broken. And yet Theresa May is our most popular prime minister for decades.

Let that sink in. And note that she is hugely popular not just in comparison with Jeremy Corbyn: she is hugely popular in her own right. What should fail in theory is a soaraway success in practice. It seems a wholly irrational state of affairs; and it is easy to see then why so many on the liberal left are so scathing of so many of their compatriots, why comment after comment and tweet after tweet deride Conservative voters as stupid, selfish, blinkered or evil. We *facepalm* and “wow, just wow” – but by doing so, we condemn ourselves to prolonged political irrelevance.

It seems many on the liberal left are determined to repeat the mistakes of the 2015 general election, the EU referendum and the US presidential race. There is a widespread failure – perhaps even a refusal – to understand the reasons May and the Conservative party are so popular. Until we try to do so, we will always lose.

We will break this cycle only by condemning less and understanding more. If the appeal of May’s Tory party eludes us, we surely need first to appreciate that we are relatively unusual, and then try and see what all those others see. This is not to say that they are right and we are wrong, or to ditch any of our principles; only that May evidently represents something that huge numbers of people in our country want, and that it is worth our while to analyse that and take it seriously.

Only then can we win back the people whose support we need. This is something the New Labour project, for all its flaws, understood: we must meet people where they are, not where we would like them to be. Only then can we take them with us. It just takes some emotional imagination on our part. And this brings us to the heart of our problem.

For all our supposed touchy-feeliness, many on the liberal left seem to forget that elections are fought not only on the grounds of reason but also on the battlefields of emotion. It should be obvious that responding with snark and hostility to people with whom we disagree just raises defences and entrenches beliefs: after all, we know how we react when we are mocked and insulted. But we should also have learned by now that facts in themselves are often unpersuasive too. If we have not grasped this from experience, then there is plenty of scientific research to make that clear. We can recite statistic after statistic, pointing to failing after failing, and they’ll just bounce off our intended target because Theresa May gives them a sense of confidence that Jeremy Corbyn does not. You can win a hundred arguments and change not a single mind.

We can believe that these millions of people are wrong, but we cannot say they are stupid. Nor are they all zombies, or all brainwashed, or all unenlightened. And it’s not enough to blame “the media”, either: newspapers are commercial operations and if the public mood changes, the media often changes with it. This was the case in 1997 and continues to be the case today: it is why, say, the political position of the Scottish Sun may differ from that of its English counterpart. It would obviously be naive to underestimate the extent to which some newspapers shape public opinion, but these publications would not exist if they failed to reflect it.

So we need to do things differently. We need to listen to people. That means more than hearing what they say: it means treating it with respect. It means paying attention not just to the words, but to the tone; noticing not just what we hear, but what we see, recognising the emotions playing across the faces, the hurt and anger and mistrust in the eyes. That’s where the truth lies. That’s where we need to start.

We have been here before. The challenge we face therefore is to do something different this time. A precedent gives hope: when the Tories won in 1992, many believed Labour would never again be in government. Five years later, people were saying the same about the Conservatives. Things can change quickly. But it will take a concerted effort from many on the left to lay off the sneering – and try understanding.