For Labour the choice is stark: purity, or power | Martin Kettle

Having naively backed Tony Benn in 1979, I know a potential party of government – however traumatised – must realise that the urge to feel good about itself can lead to the wilderness

In human lives, a traumatic experience lasts for years. In politics, it seems a trauma can be overcome in only a few short weeks. The Liberal Democrats will have a new leader in less than a month, while Labour is well into selecting a new chief by September. These processes are trauma denial. By putting the leadership carts before the inquest horses, both parties will fail to draw the strategic conclusions that a longer period of reflection on their general election defeats might make more possible.

This week’s Guardian reconstruction by Patrick Wintour and Nick Watt of the anguish inside the Lib Dems in the months leading up to the May catastrophe is genuinely revelatory. In many ways it is even more revelatory than Wintour’s earlier attempt to get inside the backroom stresses of the Labour campaign. In Labour’s case, the party’s internal anguish about Ed Miliband and his ineffectual leadership was hardly a secret before the election. But the Lib Dem psychodrama has been much more effectively concealed from the public gaze – until now.

Related: The Clegg catastrophe | Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt

Both the Lib Dems and Labour are flirting with classic denial mechanisms of the politically traumatised

Related: Pollster John Curtice warns Labour a majority in 2020 is 'improbable'

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