Lisa Nandy listens – and that’s what Labour needs more than anything

Every faction within Labour has its own explanation for what happened, and each can find the evidence to show they were right all along. Jeremy Corbyn loyalists blame Labour’s drift towards an anti-Brexit position. After all, in seats that voted 60% or more to Leave in 2016, there was a huge eight-point swing against Labour. There must be at least some truth in that. Corbynsceptics blame Corbyn, highlighting that the leadership was by far the biggest reason people cited for not voting Labour. There is clearly a lot of truth in that. And those who have prioritised Remain blame the years of dither over Labour’s Brexit policy, pointing out that Labour lost twice as many voters to Remain parties as to the Tories. Again, there is probably something there. So it goes on. But is this argument really doing us any good?

For anyone connected to the labour movement, defeat at this scale ought to trigger strong emotions – anger, grief, humility, respect. Anger, at how Labour could have fallen so far. Grief, at what it could mean for the country. Humility, at the sheer scale of the defeat. And respect, for those (the voters) who inflicted it.

What it shouldn’t be is just another data point in an endless factional argument. If partisans simply incorporate this wipeout into their pre-existing views, then Labour will lock itself into a death spiral. We don’t need more policy debate, more ideology, more argument and more shouting at each other. That’s what got us here. The tendency for Labour members not to listen carries through to our relationship with voters. What we need is more emotional intelligence, so we can learn to start listening – to each other, and to the electorate.

And that’s what we need, first and foremost, in a new leader: emotional intelligence. At the heart of this defeat was a lack of trust, both within Labour and between the party and the country. The only way to rebuild trust is to listen to others, show respect, and find some common ground. I strongly believe that the person best placed to lead that effort is Lisa Nandy.

It helps, of course, that Lisa has a fair claim to being more demonstrably right than any other potential candidate about what has gone wrong for Labour. This election result shows that her almost obsessive focus on towns in the last few years is the correct lens to understand our politics. The political, economic and social divide between towns and the big cities – a divide that has been growing for a long time now – is now the defining split in British politics. Labour won handsomely in the big cities, with 44% of the vote. But in every smaller category of place they lost, badly. Over and over again in the last three years, Lisa said that the next election would be won in the towns. She was right.

But at this crossroads for the party, it’s even more important to be right emotionally than it is to be right analytically. The job for the new leader is not to persuade others that they’re wrong but to start listening, as a first step towards bridging our divides. And that applies to the country just as much as to the Labour coalition. Put simply, Labour must straddle the divide between young graduate Remainers in cities and older, non-graduate Leavers in towns. To lead that effort will demand a lot of emotional intelligence.

Lisa has shown time and again that she has what it takes to do this kind of work. Brexit has incited more anger and passion in this country than any other political issue in my lifetime. And yet Lisa, despite intense pressure from both sides, has had the courage to try to find a way through. She sought concessions from Theresa May to ensure workers’ and environmental rights would be protected, and only voted against the original withdrawal agreement when those concessions weren’t forthcoming. Throughout, she has stuck to the principle that Brexit should happen while seeking to limit the damage it causes. And that – if the Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit is anything to go by – is probably a fair description of where, on balance, the country is.

That instinct to dismiss false binaries and find the common ground comes through in the smaller stuff, too. Earlier this year there was a public argument – confected through a throwaway question in an interview with John McDonnell – about whether Winston Churchill was a hero or a villain. It was a classic piece of 21st-century political theatre, allowing pundits to vilify politicians on all sides. On Question Time that week, Lisa rightly dismissed the whole thing: “Churchill would have had no time for this sort of nonsense at all. He understood that there was complexity in this world, and so should we, frankly. We are letting people down with this level of political discourse.”

Voters tend to notice the smaller moments when true character reveals itself. That’s no bad thing. There is already far too much ideology, partisanship and tub-thumping in our politics. We need to pay more attention to those moments when the qualities of a leader are revealed.

We can talk about policy – there’s certainly no shortage of it floating around. Lisa can credibly set out an agenda that seeks to bring the country together by listening to the grievances on both sides of our divides. A concerted attempt to drive power down to the level of towns and neighbourhoods, a real focus on further education and lifelong learning, and strong investment in local jobs and transport could be combined with housing and economic reforms that would benefit young graduates in cities.

But policy should not be the priority right now. Instead, Labour members need to ask themselves who understands the scale of this defeat, who can come to terms with it, and who has the emotional intelligence to listen to all sides – both within Labour and the country – so that we can work to find common ground. The answer should be obvious.