If Labour’s crushing loss in the recent British election taught us anything, it’s not that left-wing economic ideas are unpopular. The specific policy proposals in Labour’s election manifesto, as well as its overarching vision for a green industrial revolution, resonated widely among the British electorate. From nationalizations to tax increases on the rich to worker representation on corporate boards, the popularity of the policies that comprised Jeremy Corbyn’s program ranged, in the words of one preelection report, “from quite popular to ridiculously popular.”

Nonetheless, Labour suffered its worst defeat since the 1930s as the vaunted “red wall” fell before the Tory onslaught. The election was effectively a second referendum on Brexit, which unified and energized voters on the Right while splitting Labour’s base along class and geographic lines. Corbyn attempted to displace the Brexit question with his unabashedly radical manifesto, but the gambit didn’t work, and Labour was left without any clear policy on the campaign’s most important and divisive issue.

In retrospect, there was no easy answer to this problem. Two-thirds of Labour MPs were Remainers representing Leave-voting constituencies, and any clear-cut Brexit policy the leadership might have adopted would have alienated a substantial section of its electoral base. In any case, as Richard Seymour has bluntly put it, “the options were bad and we chose badly.”