hree years ago, Labour’s left flank dared to believe that it was on the final approach to power. Today, it is tortured by what-could-have-been dreams and enraged by past betrayals. In normal circumstances, a discussion about where the left goes next would be emotionally fraught after a traumatic defeat. In the midst of a psychologically draining national emergency – in which debates principally happen in the hothouse of social media – it is proving more challenging still. The simplistic catch-all term “Corbynism” embraced disparate strands on the left. The chance of victory imposed a unity of sorts, but now the old divisions have returned. They go right to the top: Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership team was riven with acrimonious splits long before its rout. What role exists for the left in the age of Keir Starmer? There is one basic fact that should give cause for hope and caution. Hope, because Starmer owes his landslide victory to many of those who twice voted for his predecessor to be party leader. They remain, by and large, committed to the core domestic policies associated with Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader. Caution, because when someone votes for a candidate to become leader, they want them to do well; but they quickly become aggravated if those on their own side seem to be willing failure. Throughout the Corbyn era, the former leader’s most ardent critics – ranging from Labour MPs to supposed progressive commentators – appeared to relish every disappointing poll, every misstep, every defeat. They did little to disguise this fact, biding their time for big “I told you so” moments. Furious at being denied one in 2017, their pent-up triumphalism was all the uglier in 2019. They had little to say or offer that was not shrouded in negativity, aggravating not just many Corbyn supporters, but Labour members affronted by scorched-earth attacks on their own side. Unlike the damage wrought on Corbyn by his “centrist” opponents, the left cannot inflict meaningful harm on Starmer even if it wanted to. It has few sympathisers in a largely rightwing media landscape. The real danger is alienating Labour voters who are overwhelmingly supportive of the leadership, as well as the left’s erstwhile allies in the middle of the Labour party, just as the old Bennite left fell out with the “soft left” in the 1980s and then became an increasingly isolated rump. It was not Corbyn’s most embittered political opponents who succeeded him: the likes of Chuka Umunna discovered that when they left the confines of the Labour party, political oblivion awaited, while Jess Phillips lacked the requisite grassroots support to even mount a leadership bid. Instead it was a candidate who, following his low-profile involvement in the 2016 coup, publicly wished the leadership well. The policy Starmer became associated with, remain, undoubtedly proved a sweet spot among the membership. There’s a lesson for the left: if you want influence in a political party, love-bomb the members, rather than winding them up. The left’s focus should surely be on building a broad coalition for policies backed by most of the membership, and indeed millions of voters, including those who rejected Labour last December for reasons other than a passionate attachment to a privatised railway system. On this, they have a democratic mandate: Starmer won the leadership describing the 2017 manifesto as “our foundational document” and committing to 10 pledges, including hiking tax on the rich and big business, public ownership, abolishing tuition fees, and putting “the green new deal at the heart of everything we do”. There have been worrying signs that the new leadership is backtracking on these promises, and even some MPs who backed Starmer fear a retreat from a transformative agenda at the very moment in postwar British history when it is most required. When the government is debating hiking corporation tax and capital gains tax, it would be a tragic farce if Labour found itself out-lefted by its Conservative opponents. If the left sought to campaign to defend those policies, it would swiftly discover a receptive and broad coalition. There will be some who are exhausted after five years of Labour’s forever war and now have little interest in campaigning within its internal structures. But rather than adding to a graveyard of leftwing electoral alternatives to Labour, their energy would be more effectively invested in extra-parliamentary movements and struggles. Black Lives Matter has already trailblazed; there are other growing movements, too, from private renters to climate justice. All will primarily direct their energy against a government far weaker than its 80-seat majority suggests, but – linking up with those activists who remain within the party’s fold – they can pressure Labour to adopt more radical positions than it would otherwise willingly choose to do. Some on the Labour left fear a return to Blairism, but they forget how reactionary that political project became. Starmerism has yet to be defined. The left remains much more powerful than it was before Corbyn’s unlikely 2015 triumph. Its ideas still define the policy debate; it has a considerable grassroots presence to harness; and it is at its strongest in the parliamentary party than at any time since the 1980s. In the advent of a hung parliament – or even a narrow Labour win, however unlikely – those MPs will have a strong bargaining position. Here is just one example of how things have genuinely changed. While Labour once abstained on the welfare bill, it now calls for the benefit cap to be scrapped, and its shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, is supportive of universal basic income. The notion that all is lost risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who relish little more than dancing on the left’s grave have reasons to pretend its power has evaporated: but what excuse does the left itself have? Sure, it is easier to feel angrily defeated than to invest time and energy in campaigning and organising. There is a risk, too, of concluding that Corbynism was defeated purely by internal subversion and external attack. These were undoubtedly major factors, but without learning from its past mistakes, the left will reach a fatalistic conclusion that no transformative Labour government can ever be elected. For now, the left can no longer have it all, but that does not leave nothing as the alternative. Its ideas have not died: it just needs to fight for them. A crisis-stricken country needs a radical break with a broken social order far more now than it did in December 2019. That remains a prize to be won. • Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist