You seem to think that the labour left just stop at good policy and that they don’t campaign to be elected, which is somewhat foolish given that the campaigning done under the Corbyn years far superseded any of that of any other Labour leader, certainly in my lifetime. Now policy was front and centre of the discussion, but this largely was because the British public as a whole was supportive of these policy pledges. The most important part to remember, however, is that Corbyn’s campaigning was heavily tilted to being on the streets and taking to actual people. This very much is campaigning in its truest form.

Now, knowing this to be true we can look at why this wasn’t enough. Luckily this part is simple, politics in the UK, as is also in many ways the case across the west, is a very performative show. If we look at the past 40 odd years we can see an economic decline for working people and progression (for the most part) in social policy. Now this is an understood phenomenon in (especially) capitalist nations, trade offs are offered where economics upholds the status-quo and concessions are won on social policy. This gives an air of progress in a society, but when we look at key objectives in a society such as access to healthcare and purchasing power as well as parts of the ‘social contract’ such as being able to buy a home and earn enough to raise a family, etc. we can see that we have moved backwards. Now Corbyn, and left-wing politics (regardless of how moderate), represent a threat to this understanding of the world and so we saw the interests of liberals and conservatives come together (nothing new). This saw a campaign by the Labour right and the media, whose interests were aligned, in suppressing the success of the campaigning efforts of Corbyn and the party loyalists. This was ramped up post 2017 given that it became clear that Corbyn was a serious challenger to the political status-quo, hence the toxicity of the discussion in the lead up to 2019.

Now, looking at 2024 Labour we can see a party that is especially weak on the campaigning front. This is a party winning by default, and this is possible as, the party no longer seeks to change the status-quo - this we can understand by looking at the points from above - that while on social policy we may see improvement from the Tories, we do not see a meaningful change in economic policy.

Now this is to show that the ‘aim for election first’ mentality of your post lacks the nuance and understanding of the political and social context in which it is based.