A sectarian of the left is one who defines himself by the differences he has with the public (as Ken Livingstone once memorably said "no compromise with the electorate").

That aspect has been on prominent public display since Thursday with people suggesting Labour should "go for broke" or similar.

Instead of focussing on the issues that have won us three elections - educational standards, high quality health care and being tough on crime and its causes, we are urged to do things like abolish grammar schools, introduce a written constitution (they talk of nothing else down the dog and duck)  and tax the rich till the pip squeak.

These "solutions" are usually combined with a claim we're following "Tory" policies (though I don't remember the Tories trebling health spending and aiming to raise participation in higher education).

[I don't like grammar schools any more than the next comrade (and I went to one), but I don't regard smashing them as key priority. Far better, I'd say, to turn every secondary modern into an academy.]

But more than anything the hard left attack reveals their inner core: they don't think social democrats really should be in power. The mere act of producing election winning policies is a compromise too far and it is far better to return to the natural order of the Tories in power and the left in the streets, protesting.

That is why they advocate a policy programme that merely seeks to polarise and not actually win any new support for progressive policies and politics.

For sure their programme would get a few thousand Guardian readers out to the polls and may even raise turnout in some safe Labour seats. But would it help us win seats in the suburbs, or North Kent?

It's a programme designed to return us to opposition because that is all its advocates feel comfortable with.

Well I'd prefer a thousands days of ideological compromise with Labour to ten minutes of Tory rule.

I'm going to fight for that fourth term, not surrender to the idea a Tory victory is inevitable.