If we learn the right lessons from defeat, we can give people a reason to vote Labour again

We are all shattered. Thursday’s result may have been foreseeable but it was devastating both for Labour and for the people who rely on us. In the aftermath, attention is understandably turning to whether we ran the right campaign, found the right soundbite, had the right leader and if the media was to blame. But the truth is, Labour has been losing support in our northern towns and coalfield communities for decades. From Bolsover to Clacton, people who feel deeply that Labour is part of their DNA couldn’t bring themselves to vote for us.

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This had been billed as the Brexit election, but it was always about so much more. There is a strong feeling in towns like mine that Labour stopped listening long ago and that we no longer have much understanding or care for the things that matter deeply to them or their families.

The result last week has been a long time coming. But the signs have been there for just as long. When councils in Bolton and Hartlepool turned blue, and so many voters in Wigan, who had always rejected the far right, turned to Ukip it should have been a wake-up call. The smoke signals were going up long before the result in Blyth Valley came through but we couldn’t see them. Why? Because as a party we’ve lost touch with the day-to-day lived experience of many of the people we want to represent.

Taken individually, so many of the policies in Labour’s manifesto were popular with the public. But, as a package, they failed to touch the sides of what people feel is really needed. In my town, Wigan, many people have less than £1 left at the end of the week. There is an overwhelming sense of anxiety and insecurity, with a safety net that feels frayed and weak. People struggle and make real sacrifices and they want things to improve, for them, for their children.

They want to get on, and to get that support – a hand-up so they can take care of themselves. Romanticising the struggle deeply offends them and the message of solidarity is undermined by some policies that make little sense. Nationalising rail is a good, sound policy but should we have staked so much of our campaign on that policy when so many of the towns we lost have no train station and rely on buses anyway? Should we really be rejecting nuclear power when it is one of the best sources of good jobs outside London? What is the point of a minimum income guarantee if you have to stack shelves for the rest of your life and want something more, or a big offer on tuition fees if you can’t see a way of getting through college?

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If we are going to represent the country, we need to understand it, to see it as it really is, not how we might imagine it to be, and to live and experience things as the people we fight for do. We need to understand how we protect and preserve what matters, in communities north and south, towns and cities, Leave and Remain. What holds us together as a movement is our faith in each other, in our communities – as diverse and complex as we know them in reality to be. We have to turn away from a politics that is reductionist and binary and that can only push so many people further apart. To be in government is not to pick a side but to build a bridge and demonstrate what can unite. The job of the Labour leader now must be to reconcile urgently those parts of the country that want and need a Labour government, but have come adrift.

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This will not be easy. It will require listening, practical solutions and being rooted in our communities. It will take humility – and putting in the hard yards to acknowledge what we got wrong. But I am hopeful we can do it. While we lost, and lost badly, if we take the right lessons from defeat I know the Conservative party will have a lot to worry about. This was a clear victory for the Tories – but it was not won thanks to any real affection for Boris Johnson and what he stands for. He knows he is on borrowed time. An open, inclusive Labour party can provide people with a vision of a future that matters to them and that they have a stake in. We can be ambitious for our communities, to believe and to show that things can be better. We can give people something to vote for. And we can win.

• Lisa Nandy is MP for Wigan