I know this is classic fence-sitting from me, but I think both the Labour left *and* the Labour right have an incredibly warped perception of the 2017 election

The Labour left got cocky. The excitement at the time was perfectly understandable, but there wasn’t enough sober analysis once the dust had settled. Not enough acknowledgement that the war was far from won.

There was a hubristic assumption that the hard part was over, that it was just a matter of time. That was the general feeling at the time, of course, but too many people bought into their own hype and the seeds began to be sewn for last year’s disaster

Meanwhile, the right has just buried its head in the sand and dismissed 2017 as a fluke with no lessons to be drawn from it. It was just a freak of nature that lots of things aligned in Corbyn’s favour

Yes, Corbyn got lucky with the circumstances, but that’s not unusual for anyone who does well in elections. Sceptics, myself included, had argued the whole time that Corbyn was so toxic, so unpopular, that circumstances didn’t matter, Corbyn would drag Labour down.

Turning around after, as many sceptics did, and saying “oh, well, it wasn’t enough gains and anyway Brexit was a big factor” isn’t so much moving the goalposts as putting them in a different ball park.