If Owen Smith beats Corbyn but retains his ideology, he will be slaughtered by the savvy and savage Theresa May

When Theresa May told the Commons in her debut Prime Minister’s Questions that the Conservative Party had not only delivered a second female prime minister but that their latest contest had had an “all-women shortlist”, it prompted some uncomfortable shuffling of socialist buttocks on the green benches opposite. Of course, like most of her gags, it was a slightly contrived point, but it spoke directly to the insecurities and near-existential state of depression that most of the parliamentary party, and the Labour movement beyond Westminster, finds itself paralysed by.

Yet again, Labour has flunked the opportunity to elect a woman as its leader, or even to have her as a candidate. Angela Eagle did do the noble thing to withdraw from the contest and give Owen Smith a clear run as the candidate best placed – albeit narrowly – to take on Jeremy Corbyn. Yet it was still something of a pity that the main reason for her standing down seems to be the vote she – and so many others on all sides – cast for the Iraq war 13 years ago, which cost her vital support. It says a great deal about Labour’s morbid obsession with the past that it puts such a weight on judgements made then, and so little on the battle for Britain’s future.

Ms May’s confident performance cannot but have further demoralised Labour MPs. Leading a party that has recently been through a bloody civil war, and faced with the greatest political challenge in decades – Brexit and saving the Union with Scotland – not to mention an economy sliding towards recession, it is Ms May and her Tories who look to be the ones with no fear of the next election, and maybe the one after that.

The question for Labour now is a simple one: can Owen Smith do it? The problem for Mr Smith and his party is not so much whether he can beat Mr Corbyn, but what he actually represents, and what he would do as Leader of the Opposition. Usually it is a cop-out to say it is too early to tell; having risen without trace, it is more justified in the case of Mr Smith.

If he is selling himself as a man of the left, a Corbynista who just happens to be younger, funkier, more Welsh, more potent, more fashionable and with a better line in patter than Jeremy, then that will be nothing much to get excited about. Politics is about policy as much as personality, and if Mr Smith sticks to Mr Corbyn’s policies he is sunk. In other words, if Mr Smith does make it, and finds himself facing Mrs May at the despatch box every week, he will find himself equally easily brushed aside by her mastery of policy and the power of her sheer reasonableness. This daughter of the Manse speaks leftish rhetoric like, well, a trendy vicar, bluntly telling the country that black people are not treated fairly by the police, and stressing how tough making a living can be for working families. No one is used to Tory leaders saying that sort of thing: that is her fresh appeal. If Mr Smith wants to pursue Corbynism by other means, and toss the same old tired ideas across at her, then he too will be eviscerated.

Moreover, if at the next election Mr Smith goes to the country on a manifesto of stronger union rights, higher public spending, higher taxes and a pledge to abolish Trident, he will lose as badly, and possibly worse, as Ed Miliband did in 2015 and Gordon Brown in 2010. Indeed, he might even do worse than Mr Corbyn would – difficult though that may be for Labour MPs to believe. This is because even his worst enemies – and that, at least, is a hotly fought contest – have to concede that Mr Corbyn does actually believe in what he says. His very sincerity, as we recall from his insurgency only a year ago, is the key to his appeal. It made for a refreshing change after a couple of decades of Blairite triangulation (and electoral success). Mr Smith, on the other hand, will find it much more difficult to persuade his party and the country of his sincerity, and not just because he spent some time working in the private sector, unaccountably considered a mortal sin in Labour circles.

The danger, then, is that Mr Smith proves a bigger dud than Mr Corbyn and speculation about his future will, before long, submerge his leadership. He could, on the other hand, start to tack rightwards, following the same path as the last Welsh leader of his party, Neil Kinnock. But that too is a hazardous cause when the unions and the activists are now so firmly entrenched in their belief in a better yesterday.

It was Mr Kinnock who was elected leader in 1983 as a former Labour rebel, a unilateralist who pledged to abolish Tory trade union laws and renationalise key industries, but who, by the end of his time, had taken Labour firmly down the road to moderate social democracy, and electability, doing much of the spade work – as the short leadership of John Smith did for Tony Blair.

As with Mr Kinnock, though, Mr Smith may find it difficult to eat so many of his own words, and he might also have to spend as long as Mr Kinnock did in dragging his party back to sanity and expelling the entryists. Mr Kinnock toiled for nine exhausting years in the service of his party, and even then did not lead them into power. Can Labour wait until 2030 for another turn in government? Could it even survive that long?