When all else has failed with some types of electrical apparatus, you have to resort to straightening a paper clip and pushing it into the hole where the reset button is hidden away. What might work on your phone is not likely to be so effective with a political party.

A Facebook announcement from Momentum was surprising for two reasons. We often struggle to remember that Momentum is still a thing. So however, is the Tommy Steele Fan Club.

The second is that it is living in hope that Labour can be “reset”. The idea seems to be that the Corbyn dream can be brought alive again and “fair taxation of the wealthiest, real investment in public services, taking essential services like energy and water into democratic ownership, and promoting peace and internationalism abroad” can become Labour policy. The full statement is here.

The appeal is signed by some familiar names and many more unfamiliar ones. Apsana Begum, John McDonnell and Nadia Whittome are all admirable individuals, but in a context like this are the very definition of the usual suspects. Of the party’s estimated 5873 councillors in England, Scotland and Wales about sixty have signed. That is about 1%. As beginnings go for a project of political transformation that can reasonably be described as modest.

Has this anything to do with Angela Rayner’s impending leadership challenge which she is conducting with the subtlety of a herd of elephants storming towards a water hole? Her Guardian article is rhetorically adjacent to the Reset Labour text and was published the day before. Given that many of the signatories have behaved with principle over Gaza rather than remain in Starmer’s cabinet and were willing to be suspended from Labour, they are not obvious comrades in struggle. But what remains of the Labour left is so battered and fragile that Rayner looks like Rosa Luxemburg compared to Shabana Mahmood. Desperate times, desperate measures.

The more fundamental problem is political. No amount of straightened paper clips shoved into Labour is going to address what has gone wrong. The Greens are hoovering up all their young voters; the party’s enabling of the Gaza genocide has antagonised millions of Muslim and secular internationalist voters; local Labour structures are reduced to rumps in which some of the most unpleasant people active in politics run the show; working class people feel they are getting poorer and nothing works properly. No wonder Sharon Graham of Unite is predicting “Labour are going to pretty much be decimated in those elections” in May.

Check your local Labour Party’s social media feeds to see what they are doing for the elections. Mostly they are only able to get councillors, candidates, paid employees and people who need an excuse to get out of the house doing the legwork. Reset Labour correctly identify as a problem a culture “of top-down control that prevents local members from choosing their own representatives and engaging in meaningful debate and participation. That was the reset that Mandelson, McSweeny and Starmer did.

There comes a time with every electrical device where you have to accept the inevitable and either chuck it in the bin or drop it off at Currys where they will give you a £5 voucher towards your next purchase and promise to recycle it for you.