THIS is turning into a traumatic weekend for Labour.

They have faced setbacks in councils up and down the country and, of course, the catastrophic loss of the Hartlepool by-election.

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The Tories will be enjoying this weekend’s headlines after Jill Mortimer beat Labour’s Paul Williams.

This doesn’t mean the end for Keir Starmer, but it does mean the end of the honeymoon.

The party should have an honest post-mortem, which has not always proved easy for Labour.

It is time to ask some hard questions.

Was an ardent Remain campaigner really the right choice for this crucial by-election in a strongly Leave-voting seat?

It seems a daft and disrespectful decision.

But one poor choice doesn’t explain why Labour was getting clobbered from Sunderland to Redditch.

In the last six weeks, Labour has been obsessed with two issues: James Dyson supplying ventilators and the decor in Boris’s Downing Street flat.

Telephone polling was telling Labour not to pick fights with the Government about the pandemic and feedback from the doorsteps told them cash for curtains was not cutting through to voters.

But still they ploughed on.

Not the best example of Labour as a listening party.

Labour must decide what kind of party it really is.

Does Keir Starmer want Labour to be simply a party of liberal-minded big cities and university towns, or does he want it to be a voice for working-class communities in places like Hartlepool and Harlow?

My advice is that there is no path to Downing Street unless Labour is proud to be a party that champions the cause of working-class communities.

Labour must have hoped that replacing Corbyn with a new leader would wipe the slate clean.

Life is not that simple.

Not being Jeremy Corbyn is a plus.

But it isn’t enough.

Labour’s longest-standing voters — mainly white, working-class people in small towns — don’t mind a bit of nationalisation, or the Government building houses, but don’t mistake that for support for the hard-left politics that surrounded Corbyn.

Voters, in Doncaster or Hartlepool, said: “This isn’t the Labour Party I grew up with.” They were right.

APOLOGISE AND ATONE

Corbyn left many uncertain about what kind of party Labour is.

Starmer has to replace that feeling with the clear idea that Labour is a party for Sun readers and most other people too.

A Labour Party that knows how working class people think, shares their hopes and, above all, likes them.

If their biggest concern is crime, we listen and stand up for them.

If they vote Leave, we respect their choice, not condemn them.

Twenty years ago, Hartlepool’s MP was Peter Mandelson, and the Prime Minister’s constituency was a stone’s throw away.

Half the key players in the Labour government were North East MPs.

They were at the heart of power.

“They put us on the map,” one voter said on TV recently.

These MPs loved the North and the North loved them.

Today, Labour’s key people probably live within a few square miles in North London.

Starmer’s leadership started well.

He made some good calls in his first year as leader.

He voted to back the Brexit deal, shut the door on rejoining the EU and took on the racists who stained Labour with their anti-Semitism and supported the Government’s lockdowns.

He took flak from party members for all of these.

But Thursday showed people won’t forget or forgive if you don’t prove Labour has changed.

Listen, don’t pay lip service, to millions of voters who didn’t vote Labour, including those who deserted Labour for pro-Brexit parties.

Show that Labour let them down, not the reverse.

To get these voters to listen to Labour, to feel they know it and trust it enough to vote for it again, requires Labour to apologise and atone.

If we aspire to represent those communities, we have to say with real honesty: “We let you down. We didn’t listen to you about Brexit. And we are truly sorry for how we treated you.”

Starmer must talk with ambition about the future of a Britain we love.

A greener, post-Brexit Britain that spreads jobs and wealth.

Less virtue signalling, more competent answers to future challenges of crime, fair borders and social care.

And if we can develop our own vaccines, make our own PPE and manufacture our own ventilators, how much more can we make in Britain?

That should be Starmer’s mission.

And when people say: “Now this is a Labour Party I like” we’ll know we are getting a fair hearing.

• Caroline was MP for Don Valley 1997-2019, and served the Blair and Brown governments in a number of roles including Minister for Public Health and Minister for Europe.

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