One thing that stood out for me here is the unnamed shadow minister saying "Corbyn drove our reputation for economic competence into the ground." This has become such an accepted narrative that it's easy to forget what an absurd rewriting of history it is. https://www.ft.com/content/0494da9b-e7b3-4f69-8c07-79e82f64ab5d

This statement implies that before Corbyn came along, Labour had an untarnished reputation for sound economic management. In fact, the backdrop to his leadership victory was Ed M losing the 2015 election as Tories convinced voters he would "spend too much and crash the economy".

This goes right back to the 2008 financial crash, and the Tories' success in pinning the results on Labour profligacy. In 2019 this was *still* coming up on the doorstep for me: people still remembered that "Labour was in charge last time the economy tanked."

If anything, Corbyn's willingness to take on austerity politics and set the agenda actually improved Labour's electoral performance come the 2017 election. Yes, the 2019 campaign over-reached and played into ideas about Labour over-spending: but they were old ideas.

The interesting question is whether, come the next election, the pandemic will have finally eclipsed voter's memories of 2008. Now, it's no longer true that "Labour was in charge last time the economy tanked." And the austerity politics that followed is moribund.

In this context, the comment that really resonates in this FT piece is the shadow cabinet member who acknowledges Labour has often been "fighting the last war", rather than figuring out how to win the next one. And convenient factional narratives won't help it do that.

Ironically, if anything the lesson from this history is that Labour should be doing now what the Tories did in 2008: relentlessly pinning the long-drawn-out crisis that is to come on the Tories' track record of economic mismanagement, austerity and privatisation.