It's worth noting in that those moderates are still in the party. It's worth noting because people always ask for Tony Blair back when Labour loses an election. It's happening in this thread now.
Ugh, fair point and I apologise, I thought you were giving a variation of "but Labour did this thing once" as an argument that I am so sick of seeing for the millionth time on the internet. You're right to point it out.
Labour didn't become a great party in the first place by compromise. It became a great party by utterly changing society for countless years when it first truly got into power. And I think the old ways are the best in that Labour should NEVER compromise when it comes to helping the poor and less fortunate. That's what it's there for. And I see people decrying it as hopeless naive idealism... When said idealism worked and worked wonderfully once upon a time, during FAR less favourable economic conditions than now. Labour can't forget where it came from. It was properly formed in the 1900s, true, so it might not be relevant, but idk, I see the working conditions of the 1900s becoming very fucking relevant in 2019 at this rate.
But, the party needs to connect again. It needs more newspapers, a media empire of its own, the biggest trade union push to all the new workers who've never even heard of trade unions before, a good track record, and an undying hatred of the Tories to tie it all together. Labour needs to be reborn. To go to the centre would be to repeat the same thing, to fall into another cycle of ignoring the systemic change that the UK so desperately needs. It can't be a part of that cycle again, it's a broken cycle. It needs to change it, like it did before, many many years ago.