abour is doing what Labour does best after a defeat: picking itself up, dusting itself down and starting all over again by knocking the living daylights out of itself. Since last Friday’s disastrous result in Hartlepool, blame has been scattered in every direction as bile-filled civil wars resume. Whatever happened, Keir Starmer appearing to scapegoat Angela Rayner with a bungled fire and re-hire was a bad response. As ever, Labour’s most divisive faces have reemerged: blaming Jeremy Corbyn, blaming Tony Blair. “Advice” pours out: Andy Burnham says the party has lost “an emotional connection with people”. A Tory focus group finds that voters think Labour is “too concerned with itself”. Spot on. Overall, the results of the local elections give the Tories 36%, with Labour on 29%, only a bit better than the 12-point deficit it lagged by in the 2019 general election. All Labour’s fault? Hardly. Consider this: there will never again be such a golden election-winning moment for Boris Johnson, this great charlatan of a salesman, getting credit for vaccination liberation as the country explodes with optimism. Labour never had a chance against the country’s soaring growth predictions, a house price boom that is gushing cash to homeowners, ready to spend the billions extra that some households have saved during the pandemic, and here comes the return of travel and hugging. You need only look at the frisson of an election-week naval standoff in Jersey to see that Brexit is still Labour’s killer, analysts warning it still under-pins that avalanche of Tory votes. Listen to the contradictions: one frontbench MP argues that Labour must now “completely change the way it goes about things”, and yet put forward “an authentic policy offer that matches the challenges facing the country”, while Nathan Yeowell and Luke Akehurst of Labour First, Labour moderates, prescribe appealing to the “massive slice of the public who is older, or a car driver, or a homeowner, or voted for Brexit”. Well, yes, but which should it do – change or be authentic? Authentically what? The heart of Labour’s core support beats strongly remainer, pro-poor, anti-colonial, pro-public services. They have no problem with the flag and loving the country, but Labour people are patriotically proud of different British things to the Tories. I have no handy solutions to Labour’s upended identity: it was founded to serve a working class that has changed. But it doesn’t help to hear Labour people spitting contempt at its new backbone of supporters because they’re not considered traditionally “working class”: thanks to young people, graduates, urbanites, remainers, liberal-minded, socially concerned “metropolitans”, Labour now counts many mayors in strongholds such as Bristol, Manchester, London and the West of England. Many of the people who join Labour are public servants, NHS workers, teachers, charity and non-profit employees, trade union members, public interest lawyers, researchers, food bank organisers, social and care workers. The only drawback is that there are not enough of them. Governments fall, oppositions don’t win: this was not “time for a change”. This will prove to have been peak-Johnson. Once Covid is over, the prime minister must honour his ballooning hot-air promises. He won by spraying IOUs for everything, stealing Labour lines on inequality and replacing them with “levelling up”, and making pork-barrel pledges to just about everyone. Can he be as lavish with every needy English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland region as he was with Ben Houchen’s Teeside? Johnson’s rural and coastal MPs in the south are restive about losing out. His green targets for Cop26 sound good, but he has yet to spell out which difficult steps will reach them. Here’s how his promises collide with Treasury reality: to those stuck in flats with dangerous cladding he pledged that “no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs”, but he made MPs vote against help. No one would have to sell their home to pay for social care, he pledged: yet there will be no social care bill in the Queen’s speech on Tuesday. Johnson has promised an education catch-up and a lifetime further education guarantee, but the money isn’t there. The recent budget didn’t even approach the funding that would be needed to support his Ponzi promises. Instead, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warns that austerity plans mean 8% cuts to most departments. Meanwhile, spending on the NHS needs to rise by £102bn over the next decade. Johnson can’t fool enough people for ever. What if he really carries it all out? Let’s hope he does, but the faces on his benches don’t look ready to reverse the Tory credo. Labour’s task now is to hold him to every pledge and to plan a Joe Biden-sized anti-austerity alternative that would make “levelling up” and green promises a reality. The party should gather those council leaders and mayors to lead on Labour policy, exposing the broken Tory pledges on their home ground. There is one necessity: Labour must start work now on a progressive alliance that openly embraces ideas from outside, with proportional representation to prove it is no longer trapped in a self-defeating tribalism. Dare it abandon old feuding internal selections for candidates, and instead try open primaries inviting in all local voters to choose new talent? As for Labour’s self-laceration, stop it now. The party will win at the right time, when the flag it plants in the ground beckons enough people from every walk of life to deliver on all those expectations that were raised – and then dashed – by Johnson’s bogus promises.