Our party has just come third in Gorton and Denton, a previously safe Labour seat - an area where we haven't lost an election since 1931.
It is those running our party who are to blame. We need change at the top and serious lessons need to be learnt:
1) Don't ape Reform. In order to keep our voter coalition together we should be true to the progressive values that Labour is meant to stand for. The failure to do this meant large parts of our coalition fled to another progressive party.
2) Don't put factional interests ahead of everything else. The party blocked a popular candidate in Andy Burnham, who may well have been able to win this seat, from even putting himself forward for nakedly factional reasons, while the terrible decision to appoint Mandelson as US Ambassador came back to bite Labour.
3) Don't play dirty. The bizarre claims about the Greens in relation to drugs and sex workers were desperate, embarrassing, and harmful. It is no wonder they did not work and instead reflected badly on our party.
4) Don’t say only Labour can beat Reform if - thanks to the leadership's own self-sabotage - it’s not true. Because it will be true in many other seats, and now voters won’t believe us.
But fundamentally, this shows why first past the post isn’t fit for purpose. If the government doesn’t introduce proportional voting, a far right party could win the next general election outright on a minority of the vote. This possibility inevitably makes tactical voting essential in some seats, and Labour is playing with fire.
Blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique.
They put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham.
If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt - and start appealing to them.
That means a return to real Labour values - through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public.
And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously.
The Green win in Gorton & Denton sends a clear message.
When we throw trans people under the bus, when we fail to tackle Reform's rhetoric on migration, and when we abandon the fundamentals of democratic socialism, someone will step into the gulf we have left, and we will lose.
A blanket ban on puberty blockers, with a medical trial the only way to access them for young people, still isn’t enough for those who are ideologically opposed to the very existence of trans people and want the trial stopped.
Nothing ever will be. And that’s why the government must be led by specialist clinicians in the interests of the child — not ideologues.
The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform.
Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right.
I questioned the Home Secretary on how she can be proposing such obviously cruel policies.