With ballots due to go out in the Labour leadership election next week, Labour members will be starting to focus their minds on who to vote for. As they do so, they will be reflecting on the defeat last December. 

Every Labour member knew how much was at stake in this. For those of us on the left it came with the added sense that this was a once-in-a-generation chance to overhaul a broken economic model that has made in-work poverty and foodbanks a fixture of communities across the country. 

Getting Labour into a position where, thanks to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, it was going to do something fundamental to address this was huge. Members of the Communication Workers Union (the CWU) still remember the New Labour years when they had to take to the streets to fight a Labour government’s attempts to privatise Royal Mail. 

And devastating as the defeat was last December, they also remember what defeat was like in 2015 under Ed Miliband, when Labour – having compromised with the right, tacked to the centre ground and failed to offer a clear left-wing alternative – polled just 29% (even less than the 32% in 2019 and way below the 42% in 2017). 

For me it’s clear that there is no path to victory that uses that as the model. With Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, the Tories would like nothing more than to portray Labour as an out of touch political class defending the status quo. It happened in the Scottish referendum. It happened in the EU referendum. And it happened over our Brexit position in the election last year. 

We cannot fall into this trap again and we should ignore the right of the Labour Party which is now lining up to pretend otherwise. Unless we move forward with a leader and a party around them committed to a transformative politics, Labour risks death by a thousand compromises. 

Having looked at the detail of the candidates’ pitches, I’m clear that Rebecca Long-Bailey is the only candidate committed to a socialist agenda for fundamental change. The fact that in 2016 she stayed in the shadow cabinet, while others resigned to force Jeremy Corbyn out, showed leadership when the chips were down. 

And when I hear her saying we need to rebuild, with trade unions and community groups, to become part of the social fabric in ‘Red Wall’ seats once again; that we need to promise to devolve power out of Westminster, as a clear offer to those who have no faith in politicians; and when I hear her talk about how we could have sold the plan for a Green Industrial Revolution to bring together all parts of our coalition, it’s clear to me that she understands where Labour went wrong. 

All of these things convince me that she is the leader to take Labour forward and to show that the party has learned the lessons of the past four years. While we barely even registered outside of Westminster on Brexit, we shifted the dial on public ownership, climate change, investment and industrial strategy. I have no doubt that we should back the candidate who did this. That’s why I’ll be voting for Rebecca Long-Bailey.