In his new biography of Clement Attlee, John Bew observes that the former Labour Prime Minister faced “incessant carping” about his performance and faced no fewer than four attempts to oust him as leader.

Although he’s now generally lauded as one of the 20th century’s finest British leaders, one who achieved a great deal during his six years in office, at the time some on the Left of his party questioned his credentials as a “true” socialist and argued that he’d opted for steady pragmatism over genuine revolution.

Indeed, every Labour leader or premier since Ramsay MacDonald has been accused of “selling out” or being “too right wing”. Before Tony Blair there was Harold Wilson, and before Harold Wilson there was Hugh Gaitskell, who famously pledged to fight, fight and fight again to save the party he loved from those who elevated ideological purity above achieving office.

Read more: Kezia Dugdale accuses Jeremy Corbyn of trying to undermine her

Thus when Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected leader, obviously, on Saturday afternoon, there was the usual retreat into sloppy history, statements to the effect that his increased mandate had “reclaimed” the Labour Party from Tony Blair’s “Third Way” aberration. But in truth it’s another misplaced nostalgia trip, up there with Brexit in harking back to an ideal age which in reality has never existed.

A few weeks ago I had a revealing exchange on Twitter with Stewart McDonald, one of the more thoughtful SNP MPs. He had observed that Scottish Labour’s decline was “largely down to themselves”, but when I asked him to provide some examples of this self-immolation he retreated into generalities. “People seem to forget how dreadful they became in office,” he replied. “No sense of purpose & very managerial.”

But that simply described any party that’s spent a long time in power, even the SNP. You start off with high-minded rhetoric about changing the world and end up claiming paperclips on expenses and getting ministerial cars to drive perfectly healthy MSPs eminently walkable distances. The SNP in office might retain a sense of purpose, but “very managerial” is an apt description of a Scottish Government about to enter its tenth year.

Other oft-cited reasons quickly fall apart on closer examination. For Nationalists of Nicola Sturgeon’s generation, it all comes down to nuclear weapons, although it’s always worth remembering that when the First Minister chose the SNP over Labour in 1986 the latter was still a unilateralist party. Newer recruits like the Paisley MP Mhairi Black believe it’s because Labour embraced “neoliberal” economics, which ignores the obvious point that the SNP did too. Whenever Nationalists criticise New Labour, they seem unaware that they’re also criticizing themselves.

Read more: Kezia Dugdale accuses Jeremy Corbyn of trying to undermine her

And on Saturday afternoon there were the usual weasel words (via press release) from the SNP, its Business Convener Derek Mackay congratulating Corbyn on his victory before lambasting his inability to take on the Tories and therefore form a future government. Corbyn, by the SNP’s own past logic, ought to be the solution to Labour’s electoral woes, but now he’s in place they say he can’t possibly win an election.

Worse is the unholy alliance between this sort of opportunistic posturing and the shallow analysis offered up by some in the Corbyn tent. On Saturday the journalist-turned-activist Paul Mason said the Scottish Labour Party ought to back independence, but the idea that such a Damascene constitutional conversion would result in thousands of former supporters abandoning the SNP to come back into the fold is about as credible a prospect as Alex Salmond not giving an interview for more than a week.

And much of this misunderstands the real reason for Scottish Labour’s demise. Throughout the 1980s and 90s its sense of “purpose” was sustained by its commitment to the creation of a Scottish Parliament and its control of the constitutional narrative, thus it started losing votes as soon as devolution became a reality in 1999. Like the Liberals and Ireland in 1922, “Home Rule” for Scotland robbed them of their unique selling point.

Thereafter the SNP gradually took control of the constitutional agenda, inevitably depicting devolution as a failure and presenting independence as the next stop on Scotland’s Home Rule journey. It mattered not that Scottish Labour spent years presenting itself as a bulwark against southern Blairism, for the shift did not fundamentally rest on a Left/Right dynamic, as the former MP George Galloway appears to believe. “Scottish Labour didn’t lose its way because it wasn’t Scottish enough”, he tweeted recently, “but because it wasn’t Labour enough.”

Read more: Kezia Dugdale accuses Jeremy Corbyn of trying to undermine her

In fact, there’s great consistency between Scottish Labour in the 2000s and the SNP in the 2010s: both elevated or elevate constitutional change above policy matters, both have opted for mild reform over a genuinely radical platform, and both prioritised lofty rhetoric about “Scottish values” and “social democracy” over actually doing very much. For all the contemporary chatter about “identity” politics, in retrospect Scotland’s been at it for the last three decades.

Which is why the Scottish Labour Party’s recent initiatives, from attempting to outflank the SNP on the Left during May’s Holyrood election to securing further “autonomy” in organisational terms at this week’s Liverpool conference, are unlikely to achieve very much. Just over a week ago Kezia Dugdale firmed up her often shaky line regarding another independence referendum, but that too was a case of too little, too late, for Ruth Davidson has already taken ownership of that increasingly vote-winning agenda.

As for Corbyn, he now faces what remains of his annual conference with an increased mandate from the party grassroots if not his aimless and divided Parliamentary Party, but if a revolution beckons it remains astonishingly short on detail. All the talk now is of “unity”, but unity around what? More than a year into his leadership of a once-proud party and we still have no idea about what Corbyn would actually do in the unlikely event of winning the next general election, which Scottish Labour figures now fear will come sooner rather than later.

We’re told he represents a break with “the system” and a “new kind of politics”, but those are just the usual platitudes, albeit clearly enough for the hundreds of thousands of members who’ve just endowed Corbyn with a refreshed mandate. For older and younger Labour activists, their nostalgic brand of left-wing politics is so pervasive and unquestioned that supporting anyone other than the Member for Islington North looks like a needless form of compromise.

These days, personality cults surround the most unlikely characters, be it Bernie Sanders in the United States or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. By contrast there was no such thing associated with Clement Attlee, but he achieved great things – much of which endures – and in challenging circumstances. The Labour Party of today, or rather the majority of its members, betray a fine legacy – one that’s always balanced electability with ideology – by continuing to indulge themselves.