Chris Powell, a former Labour strategist and the brother of Keir Starmer’s National Security Advisor, has warned that the party needs a total “reset” to take on Reform UK this year. As leader of a project called Winning Against Populists, the Blair-era advertising guru is proposing that Labour can defeat Nigel Farage with an image rebrand and a tighter embrace of the European Union.

Writing for the Guardian earlier this week, Powell pointed out that “Starmer has at last begun to talk about a closer relationship with Europe, and more broadly challenge the disastrous failure that is Brexit.” Yet, as I demonstrated in a large-scale poll with YouGov last summer, while the British public may be unhappy with Brexit, their reasons are not necessarily the ones that political elites such as Powell and his brother Jonathan might think. Voters in Hartlepool have not suddenly been won over to the Common Fisheries Policy. Mansfield locals were not especially hankering for nearly a billion pounds of taxpayer money to be spent on reopening the Erasmus scheme.

What I found in my poll was a widespread belief among British voters — of all parties, across the political spectrum — in national control over policymaking. Energy, employment law, agriculture, public ownership, border control, taxes, regulation: in all cases, British voters expressed a strong preference that decisions over these policies should be made by the UK Government alone, not in diplomatic treaties or as part of a supranational political entity.

Voter disappointment with Brexit may not be about leaving the EU, but instead in the fact that the powers associated with leaving have not been properly deployed to improve Britain. “Bregret” is about squandered opportunities by British leaders, not a rekindled love for those in Brussels.

The answer to Labour’s political and policy woes has been staring it in the face for nearly a decade, yet the party still refuses to accept it. To reset, Labour must embrace a “full Lexit” — a Left-wing rejection not just of EU membership but also of the globalised, bureaucratic, distant form of politics it represented.

A full Lexit means genuine sovereignty over laws, meaningful control of borders, the restoration of authority to ministers and Parliament, and a serious reduction in the power and number of quangos. Above all, it should deliver a properly ambitious industrial strategy rooted in active state economic planning.

This would include state aid through grants and tax concessions to drive growth and employment across the country. It means widespread domestic procurement rules, a Preston model for the United Kingdom. It means public ownership where necessary. It means a reorientation of the country’s trade strategy from “free” trade to the strategic use of tariffs that can be used to rebuild domestic production capacity.

A Left-wing, patriotic, and democratic policy programme has the potential to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. For the Left, it offers a strong, bold, active state. For those attracted to populism, it is decidedly positioned against economic elites and the quango class. It is a politics of democracy and sovereignty, which has an appeal to the vast majority of voters.

Yet, Starmer — or whoever replaces him — will likely see these policies as beyond the pale. Even if in rhetoric alone the Prime Minister has been accused of sounding Powellite, it’s a different band of Powells — Jonathan and Chris, not Enoch — from whom he will continue to seek counsel.

It is probably too late for Starmer, but a change in leadership is not a sufficient answer to Labour’s woes. Nor is it the reset being advanced by Chris Powell and his pro-EU colleagues. Will Labour ever be willing to return to its traditions as a patriotic, democratic, and socialist party? It feels increasingly unlikely.

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Richard Johnson is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Queen Mary University of London.

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