Labour is a more complicated political party than most. For over a century, it has tried to contain warring traditions, philosophies and factions. Internal disagreements have been driven not just by personal rivalries, but by profound differences about how, and how much, to challenge Britain’s deeply embedded arrangements of power and wealth.

The party’s current crisis, while most directly caused by Keir Starmer’s political shortcomings and the chillingly selective morality of Peter Mandelson, is really the result of one Labour tradition demonstrably failing in government to meet the needs of today’s world. Often dominant in the party, especially over the past 40 years, you could call that tradition Labour minimalism.

Labour minimalists believe that England is a fundamentally conservative, right-leaning country, in which the party can only succeed electorally and in government by appearing as moderate and unthreatening to powerful interests as possible. In 1985, in his first act as a senior party figure, Mandelson commissioned a report by a fellow Labour minimalist, the political analyst Philip Gould. “Positive perceptions of the Labour party tend to be outweighed by negative concerns,” wrote Gould, “particularly [about] unacceptable ‘beyond the pale’ figures.” Provocative leftwing MPs, bold-sounding leftwing policies, fierce leftwing rhetoric: all should be pared back, marginalised or dropped altogether, the two men agreed, so that Labour could reposition itself advantageously on the centre ground.

First under Neil Kinnock, then Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and finally Starmer, minimalism became the party’s operating principle. Labour politics became about discipline, self-denial and self-control; about........

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