The result of the US president election was a punch in the face. Brexit was a body shot, but this hurt way more.

What it means for the future of America and the world remains to be seen. Donald Trump won and won big. Yet one could not help but be left wondering after witnessing online bickering and point scoring as to the relevance of Britian’s left on its own shores. The left and the Labour party cannot afford to get distracted at such a critical juncture.

Plenty of Bernie Sanders acolytes laid out their stall that the Democrats should have picked him as the candidate over Hillary Clinton. In their mind this would have guaranteed victory in the early hours of the 9 November. Their reason? A presumption that opinion polls before the election campaign would have reflected the final result. 

Sanders may have been further ahead of Trump than Clinton, having not been the centre of Republican opprobrium throughout the primaries. But let us ask ourselves for a moment though: what does it matter now? Dwelling on this does not uncover why Trump won. It only pits the centre-left against one and other in petty bickering while the tough questions go unanswered.

A forensic understanding of Trump is requisite when moving to counter him. It will not be long until politicians cut from the same cloth use his tactics on our shores and across Europe. In fact, glancing back to June’s vote, they have already begun.

Looking to the US, let us be frank: Trump was devastatingly effective. He hammered home his message with unparalleled discipline. Using identical methods to the Leave campaign during the referendum, he spoke plainly and directly. Speaking less like a robot or worse, a politician, he struck a chord with ordinary Americans. Feeding into his carefully crafted image of authenticity, one study showed he spoke at a fourth grade level during his campaign. The same study showed that in a 220 word answer Trump gave, 172 of his words had just one syllable.

Simplicity was critical. Critical in underlining his rhetoric, all he had to do was create steady streams of controversy to maintain his narrative and get us talking. Trump paid little in ad spending in the end. Why? He did not have to – we did all the hard work for him. Outraged and offended, Twitter storm after Twitter storm, millions participated in his egotistical rise to power.

His ability to seize the narrative unique, his promotion of key messages unrivalled, we were all party to his gargantuan marketing strategy. Just look at your newsfeed now. Notice anything? Can you tell me what Hillary Clinton’s slogan was? I sure can’t. He sucked the oxygen out of her campaign with a simple strategy. Keep the conversation about you, keep your opponents on the back foot, do not let their message out.

In short, what is most shocking looking back is not the speed with which Trump rose to the presidency but the simplicity with which he managed.

Is there a way for the centre-left to deal with this? It is difficult to say, be it in the US, Britain or Europe. Tackling the above will prove to be a real test. The people we are fighting against are aggressive, polished and organised. Worst of all, following last night’s result, their confidence now unequalled.

There is no historical precedent for what happened yesterday. New ground will need to be broken. Fresh thinking is required and it will not be easy by any stretch. Breaking reactionary forces with a new idealism and vision will not be easy, but at least there is still a chance.

Do we want to win back power? Take back control? Get our country back? Then we need to take this set back as a lesson. Stop bickering over nuance, put voters’ big questions to ourselves and deliver answers, otherwise we will live to see this happen again.

Chris Carter is a member of Progress. He tweets at @ChrisJCart