A letter to Labour: you can win next time...

....but only by changing. Radically. It probably won't happen, given the stranglehold Momentum seems to have on the party, but here's my recipe for avoiding becoming a minor party for years to come.

1. Stop the insults. It's just bad basic psychology to call people who disagree with you stupid, uncaring, selfish, racist, and so on - do you really think that's going to convert them to your side? You'd have thought that would have been obvious from the 2016 referendum, but apparently not. And don't just stop the insults about your potential electors, stop them about the Tories too. Then people may believe you when you talk about 'kinder, gentler' politics.
   
   I can't over-emphasise this point. I've just seen on TV a Labour supporter in her early 20s ask what needs to change next time. She said the electorate needs to examine its collective conscience. The hashtag #notmygovernment is trending on Twitter. There's no trace of humility or wanting to understand people's motivations. Let me help you along - most people care just as much as you do about the less well-off in society, they just think/thought that the people and policies presented would make things worse, not better. It seems to astound some people that alternate viewpoints and analyses to theirs can exist; you need to get over the fact that they do, and that the people who hold them aren't bad people.
   
2. Find a decent leader. Tricky one, this. From what I've seen you've no-one with an ounce of Boris's charisma, so you'll have to settle for someone who at least seems competent. Keir Starmer or John Ashworth probably come closest. If you pick Jess, Rebecca or Angela, you've no chance.
   
3. Get more constructive on the NHS. Ok, so we don't spend quite as much of our GDP as some of our near neighbours on it, but our outcomes are frequently dramatically worse. That's because it's a producer-interest dominated terrible delivery system. You have a unique opportunity here not open to the Tories. They can't tinker with the current model without opening themselves up to all sorts of accusations, and ones that might be believable next time (sell the NHS to the US? I'm crying here). You, however, can quite plausibly propose changes that would move the NHS to an insurance-based, better funded model operated by most of the western European social democratic governments, without any electoral consequences. In fact, it would bear fruit; you'd be seen as developing Bevan's legacy.
   
4. Don't fight the creation of free schools. They're working, as England's march up the PISA international education standards table, and Scotland's march down it, prove. Go with it, embrace it, much as it'll hurt.
   
5. Put forward plausible plans to build lots of housing. And I don't just mean public sector housing, though that has a big part to play. Get to grips with the vagaries, inequities and weird incentives in the planning laws, rules and regulations, and demonstrate that enough can be built to dramatically increase the possibility of people under 35 being able to afford their own place. This is a long term problem, and if the Tories don't grasp the mettle on this in the next 12 months they're going to really vulnerable next time round.
   
6. Properly think about the things that affect people's day-to-day lives. Including:
   
   Transport: it's just not credible to say you'll both slash fares and nationalise the network; people didn't believe you. Instead, show where targeted investment is needed, and the benefits it'll bring. Come across as pragmatic rather than ideological. And don't be anti-car for purely Green reasons - lots of people in the northern places you lost rely on their vehicles to get to work and to exist; they don't have the public transport networks of the big cities. Clobbering the motorist is foolish; incentivise better behaviours instead, like promising to provide a bigger network of e-car charging points for example.
   
   Law and order: yes, you had a point about 'Tory cuts' to the police force, but rather than just make that point, why weren't you as vocal as the Tories about recruitment this time round? Next time, and you'll hate me for saying this, you need to take seriously the first part of Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" mantra.
   
   And here's a less obvious example of the kind of thinking you need to do: people love being able to sign up to new things on the internet; it's quick and easy. But ever tried to stop a Sky subscription? I hear it's hell. So make it compulsory that if it's possible to sign-up for something online, it's equally possible to de-subscribe online. Create regulatory standards for customer service provided by call centres for all firms of greater than 500 employees, so that folk aren't hanging on the line for 40 minutes merely trying to alter a direct debit amount.  An idea you can steal from the Tories - introduce portable rental deposits between houses (rather than the insane idea of rent controls). Make people feel you're trying to make their lives less hasslesome.
   
   I say it again: be less ideological, and more psychological.
7. Don't go any further down the Social Justice road. Your metropolitan voter base will stay with you if you never again mention, for example, LGBT or trans rights; they're going nowhere. But you'll continue to alienate a large part of the rest of your natural support, because subliminally it sends a message that care more about a comfortable middle class person who happens to be gay, rather than a poor 25 year old with few qualifications who works in Tesco in Middlesbrough. 

So there we are - Seven Super Strategies. Turning around a Tory majority of 78 will be tough, but adopt some of the above, and you might have a chance. Oh, and don't talk about "the many, not the few". The many have spoken - you should listen.