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‘I could say everyone’s lines before they do. I might do, just to make it more interesting.’

This is how a senior Labour figure summed up the party’s leadership contest ahead of one of several hustings for members. Tired of a contest that had seen candidates parroting the same lines, they suggested the format had become so stale they could predict every answer. It sums up the mood in the Labour Party as it attempts to rebuild following four years of Jeremy Corbyn and a historic election defeat. An attempt that is not going to plan.

When Corbyn announced that he would be standing aside as Labour leader after taking the party to its worst defeat since 1935, there were tears — but for a large swathe of members and MPs there was a sense of relief. After a tawdry few years of infighting and a drift to the left, there was a chance for the party to reset. That hasn’t come to pass. In the months that have followed, it’s not just MPs clashing with one another — an all out war has broken out within the Labour Party among supporters and members. Infighting and factionalism has become the order of the day. Whether it’s dirty trick campaigns, unsuitable peerages or a row over transgender rights that has seen thousands of activists take to social media with the #ExpelMe hashtag, the Labour Party is not working.

To understand how we got here, it’s best to start with the contest. Corbyn’s post-defeat exit as Labour leader wasn’t unexpected. His supporters had been preparing for the event for months. When the result came through, the National Executive Committee (NEC) — which is largely controlled by Corbyn supporters — moved to make way for a very long contest, running for over three months. It also devised a hustings format that appeared designed to make them as uneventful as possible, with each candidate given only 40 seconds to answer each question and no interruptions permitted. It allowed the leadership hopefuls to speak largely unchallenged and led to accusations that it had been devised to favour the ‘continuity Corbyn’ candidate.

The problem? They hadn’t managed to agree who that was. There were concerns that Rebecca Long-Bailey lacked the required charisma, which wasn’t helped by her relative absence in the beginning. While her rivals popped up in the media frequently, Long-Bailey was notably quiet, prompting some to ask where she was. Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery considered putting his hat in the ring, as did veteran MP Barry Gardiner. Eventually Long-Bailey emerged as the preferred NEC candidate but not before the delay had given her main rival, Sir Keir Starmer, a chance to get ahead. The shadow Brexit secretary launched with a slick video big

Jess Phillips was quickly written up as a great hope. The straight-talking Brummie launched as the antidote to Boris Johnson. However, her campaign soon unravelled when it became clear that despite all her talk she had spent little time considering policies or direction. Phillips ad-libbed in an Andrew Marr interview that Britain could rejoin the EU under her leadership only to quickly U-turn when the comments sparked a backlash. Not that more time would have helped. ‘Jess was useless. Like a child who says if they had more time they would do their homework, she would never have been “ready”,’ says a Labour insider. ‘If anything the contest’s taken too long.’ MPs on the moderate end think the decision to have a three-month contest was a mistake.

The length of the contest could go some way to explaining the dwindling interest in it both among the public and inside the party. While there are multiple television debates and hustings, things could hardly be described as buzzing. One Labour MP blames that on the frontrunner, Starmer. ‘He’s boring. He’s the guy you take home to meet your parents. Not the guy you go on a date with.’ For all the attempts to suggest that he was the inspiration for Mr Darcy, there is no sign of today’s Bridget Joneses being swept off their feet by him. Starmer has spent the contest running a risk averse campaign — saying little that is confrontational and doing his best to appeal to the Left-wing membership. His 10 policy pledges — which range from a promise to abolish tuition fees to a programme of mass nationalisation — are just diet Corbynism.

At the time of going to press Lisa Nandy is the third remaining candidate — but is, according to polls, struggling to keep up with Starmer and Long-Bailey. She has won the admiration of Westminster journalists for her straight-talking campaign that has seen a focus on winning back towns. However, for all the talk of being a soft left candidate, she has so far said she would like to abolish the monarchy.

And while the contest has dragged on for so long, there’s also a sense among frustrated MPs that in some way it has also happened too soon. ‘Everyone is very raw [since the election defeat]. The membership aren’t ready for hard truths,’ says an MP who had first supported Phillips. Supporters are more concerned with stopping certain candidates than backing their own. During Phillips’ short-lived campaign, she was the subject of vitriol from Corbynites, who took great joy in her failure. There were more Labour members than Tories celebrating on social media when she dropped out. Starmer’s lead is thought to be so great that it inspired a dirty tricks campaign, with Labour HQ reporting his team for an alleged data breach. ‘That’s when you know the hard left are losing. It’s when they resort to cheating,’ says a Starmer supporter.

A wide-ranging Labour inquiry into the reasons behind the election defeat is in the works but the results aren’t expected until the contest is nearly over. The one report that has been published is an internal job that absolves Corbyn of any guilt. No candidate is willing to go near Brexit (simply declaring the matter done) and each has praised the party’s policy manifesto. Listen to them speak and you could think they had won by the post-match analysis. Long-Bailey went so far as to give Corbyn 10 out of 10 as leader.

This is in part because Corbyn’s biggest cheerleaders are very much still on the pitch. Those Corbyn outriders who filled TV studios over the past few years talking up the need for a 21st-century socialism continue to sit on TV sofas preaching that message. Rather than being chastened by the scale of their defeat, figures including Grace Blakeley — the Corbyn-supporting economist — and Left-wing writer Owen Jones have doubled down. Blakeley is near constantly on the airwaves and Jones is writing a book on what is next for the Left.

The most active debate going on relates to trans rights. All candidates bar Starmer signed a pledge effectively naming organisations such as Woman’s Place UK as hate groups for questioning whether trans people should be allowed in women-only spaces. But the backlash has been furious; another sign that Starmer’s team is the most prepared, as signing appears to not be electorally advantageous. One party insider says research suggests that the majority of Labour members are not actually fully signed up to the trans side of the debate — it tends to be the case that if you are under 30 you are pro and if you are over 35 you think denying that children are born with a biological sex, as deputy leadership candidate Dawn Butler did, is mad. The bulk of Labour members are over 35.

Away from the contest, tensions in the parliamentary party run high. Proposed peerages for Corbyn aides have sparked outrage as to why someone being scrutinised over the handling of anti-Semitism in the party ought to receive such an honour. Even former deputy leader Tom Watson’s mooted peerage is proving controversial. There are calls for him not to be ennobled given the role he played pushing police to spend millions investigating claims of a VIP paedophile ring in Westminster. No evidence was ever found and the accuser was later found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Few believe that this is a party preparing for power. Shadow secretary of state for justice Richard Burgon is out-lefting his colleagues in the deputy leadership hustings — he has promised to put Corbyn in his shadow Cabinet. Yet there is something honest about his bid, says a Labour insider. ‘Richard isn’t focused on winning. He wants to be the parliamentary leader of the hard left — and he’s on track to do that’.

Will a new leader change Labour’s fate? If Starmer wins, does he have a mandate for significant change? Every day that he announces a new Left-wing pledge, his centrist supporters grow more worried. They had thought that Starmer was putting on an act to woo the Left, but now sense it could be the other way around.

The hope is that Starmer will use the results of the election inquiry and the upcoming Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism to give himself cover to reform the party and boot out members. But the hard left are still significant in numbers. Corbyn sceptics are putting a lot of faith in the fact that Matt Pound, organiser for Labour First, traditionally the home of the party’s organised right, is working for Starmer. But his team also includes noted left-wingers such as Simon Fletcher, who worked for Corbyn.

The issue for the worried centrists is that they have no other option but to hope Starmer comes through. That or hope the Tories self-implode. ‘Right now our best route back to power is Boris Johnson self destructing,’ says one disillusioned Labour MP.