Ignore the polls – only Lisa Nandy can win back Labour's working-class base

I have been lucky to work with many leaders throughout my political life, from my involvement in the anti-apartheid movement to my role as secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

What I’ve learned is that leadership certainly isn’t about telling your supporters what they want to hear. Leadership requires honesty, courage, a vision and a plan. Lisa Nandy has it all.

Lisa is the only the leadership candidate confronting the mountain Labour has to climb. The others are either in denial about the depths of our party’s defeat, or of the belief that party members are.

As Lisa has eloquently pointed out, in December we lost seats we have never lost before, including Dennis Skinner’s in Bolsover. Our 32 per cent vote share was among our lowest ever, lower even than 1935 when we were still ravaged by the Ramsay MacDonald split. Lisa has been warning of this for years: Labour must stop pretending it can rely upon historical support.

We have just one Scottish MP where we habitually had around 50. The Tories took a swathe of seats in our generational stronghold of Wales, where in 1997 Labour pushed them out entirely. Below the M4 across the whole of the south of England, we have just six seats outside London and Bristol. We also suffered huge losses across the north and the Midlands.

Although we hung on in Neath – the former coal mining and manufacturing constituency that I represented for a quarter of a century, and where I still live – that was more out of inter-generational loyalty than any strong allegiance. My majority in 1997 was 27,000; my successor Christina Rees’s is 6,000.

The link between our party and our grassroots working-class vote has been crumbling beneath our feet. I could feel it start to happen after I first won in 1991. The umbilical cord that runs through trade unions, community clubs and Labour voters has been severed in Labour strongholds across the country.

Over the last decade clubs and pubs have closed in their thousands, and trade union membership has dwindled. The solidarity these institutions once created has been eroded, and needs to be rebuilt.

In order to win we need to do something never achieved since Attlee’s 1945 landslide: an extra 124 seats, nearly two-thirds more than we have now. It is not impossible; we have won before after historic defeats. But it took 18 years to do so before 1997; 13 before 1964; and a World War on top of a Tory decade before 1945.

But on each of those occasions our base was still solid, if changing. And crucially, we had visionary popular leadership.

Lisa represents that leadership, which is why she is winning the hustings, winning support wherever members hear her in person, and outclassing her rivals in hostile broadcast interviews.

Lisa is a different kind of leader but that’s what the public want. In January, Channel 4 ran focus groups asking the voters Labour needs to win back for their thoughts on each of the candidates. They overwhelmingly chose Lisa.

Often, these communities have been ahead of the politicians and perceived wisdom. Pollsters may show Lisa behind in this race but hundreds of thousands of party members and trade unionists are undecided and haven’t yet voted. If you’re one of them my message is: now is the time to be bold.

Lisa is the quickest way for Labour to win back power, maybe the only way. She will make a first-class leader and deserves your first preference.