As the days pass since the earthquake that was the Gorton and Denton byelection, the result is being parsed in the usual ways. A mid-cycle protest vote and frustration with the pace of “delivery”. Some have even blamed the electorate itself. More reflective voices have called for a “reset” or a reaffirmation of “Labour values” – often shorthand for an internal recalibration.

All of those contain fragments of truth. But none explains the scale of what now confronts Labour – and the country.

This is not a communications problem. It is not a personality problem. It is not even primarily a leadership problem, though leadership is clearly an aggravating factor and a constraint on the scale of change required. This is a legitimacy problem: the legitimacy of a political status quo that appears to monopolise what is considered possible – the pace, scope and direction of change. And increasingly, even its right to govern within a democratic system.

To understand its origins, we have to look beyond the news cycle. The crises since 2008 did not arrive in a vacuum. The financial crash exposed the fragility of an economic model decades in the making – shaped by Thatcherite marketisation, financialisation and the steady retreat of democratic control from key sectors of the economy.

New Labour did not dismantle that settlement; it stabilised and deepened it. Margaret Thatcher herself recognised as much when she said her greatest achievement was New Labour. The architecture of liberalised finance, privatised infrastructure and deference to corporate power was not reversed. It was normalised.

In the political economy of Peter Mandelson, architect of that thinking, proximity to wealth – politically, personally and in policy formation – became a mark of seriousness. Access became influence; influence shaped direction. Labour grew increasingly fluent in the language of markets, less confident in the language of democratic power.

That settlement has now exhausted its legitimacy. A disillusioned public recognises continuity where it was promised change. Nothing short of a decisive break with Thatcherism will........

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