One useful way to think about the Labour Party’s current crisis is by comparing it to the two previous major crises in the party’s history.

All three have followed, and been directly caused by, macroeconomic crises. Labour’s project, as a party of government, has always been the efficient management of a capitalist economy, to foster economic growth, and thereby enable the more equitable distribution of an economic surplus. Absent a growing surplus to distribute, however, Labour is unclear and internally divided on questions of economic policy, and on broader political goals.

As Andrew Thorpe once put it, “during more prosperous times, Labour does at least have something coherent to say: namely, that the fruits of that prosperity should be used in order to create a fairer society . . . The problem, throughout Labour’s history, is what to do when the economy moves into difficulties.”