This wasn’t just an election. It was a verdict.

This wasn’t just an election. It was a verdict.

The dust has perfectly settled on last week’s local elections, and what a glorious, blood-soaked carnival of neoliberal failure it was.

Labour eviscerated

The Labour Party, under the watchful, slightly constipated gaze of Keir Starmer, has been eviscerated.

More than 1,400 councillors are gone and control of dozens of councils evaporated like the morning mist over a fracked countryside.

In the north, heartlands that once beat with the red pulse of organised labour turned to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in numbers that should terrify every suit in Westminster.

The Greens picked up hundreds of seats too, because when your government offers nothing but warm words and cold cuts to the working class, people will grasp at any alternative.

I won’t pretend the Greens are the pure saviours of the left, though their gains are a bright spot. But at least they are offering something closer to genuine alternatives in places like Lewisham and Hackney.

All branding, no kick

So, let’s start with the man at the top. Keir Starmer, the once-great socialist hope who turned out to be the political equivalent of decaffeinated coffee – all of the branding but none of the kick.

The red wall was supposed to be rebuilt, brick by brick, with hope and public investment. Instead, we’ve had two years of Starmerism, which is no more than a beige ideology that blends Tory austerity with a smug human rights lawyer’s lecture on fiscal responsibility.

Labour were hammered because NHS waiting lists are still a national disgrace. The housing crisis is worsening and wages stagnate while fat cat energy bosses laugh all the way to their offshore accounts.

And don’t get me started on the deeply flawed migration policy that somehow manages to be both inhumane enough to alienate the left and ineffective enough to hand Reform UK a stick to poke them with.

And what of Keir Starmer’s response to the epic battering?

He “took responsibility” in that trademarked way of his – the one where he sounds like a headmaster explaining why the school trip was cancelled due to fiscal restraints.

More managerial piffle

There has been no resignation. No leadership contest, yet. Just more of the same managerial piffle about delivering change, as if the electorate didn’t notice that his idea of change is rebranding the same old capitulation to markets, donors, and focus groups.

The man ran on a platform of not being the Tories, and then governed like their ever-so-slightly more competent cousin who still sends Christmas cards to the CBI.

Here was a party that purged its left-wing with the ruthless efficiency of a Stalinist show trial, only to discover that, without actual socialism, they had nothing to offer the people who clean their offices, drive their Ubers, and staff their hospitals.

The purge of the Corbynites was supposed to make Labour electable. Turns out it made them forgettable. Working-class voters didn’t abandon Labour because it was too left-wing; they abandoned Labour because it abandoned them.

Peacocking Farage

Meanwhile, in comes Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, strutting like a peacock that’s just discovered TikTok.

Farage’s merry band of racist populists gained over 1,400 seats themselves, snatching councils from Labour in places like Barnsley, Bradford, and Sunderland.

Be in no doubt, Reform is not the answer. They’re the question, asked in the most obnoxious accent possible. Their politics is a toxic cocktail of anti-immigrant scapegoating, culture-war drivel, and promises to cut taxes for the rich while magically fixing public services.

Farage offers the political version of those miracle weight-loss pills. Swallow this, blame the foreigners and the tofu-eating wokesters, and everything will be fine.

It won’t work. It never does.

Rage channelled into nativism

Not all Reform voters in these elections were secret fascists cackling over a pint. Many were angry, decent people watching their communities crumble under decades of neglect – first New Labour’s warmongering and PFI scams, then Tory austerity, then Starmer’s continuation of the same failed ideological vandalism.

Reform channels that rage into nativism because it’s easier than admitting the real enemy is a capitalist system. Isn’t it funny how they continuously rail against “elites” while their financial backers include the same hedge-fund types and offshore interests who’ve been hoovering up wealth for generations? Perhaps you’re not supposed to notice?

To Reform voters, just in case you stumble upon this. Your anger is entirely valid, but your diagnosis is absolutely wrong. Blaming the brown person down the road won’t nationalise the railways, build council houses or bring down energy bills.

The new Reform councillors will now have to do the unglamorous work of fixing potholes and arguing over bin collections – tasks that don’t lend themselves to viral rants about “the blob”.

Seriously, I cannot wait for the first Reform-run council to discover that stopping the boats doesn’t magically repair the roof of the local leisure centre.

A brutal mirror

The local election results are a brutal mirror. Starmer’s Labour looked into it and saw a party that had become indistinguishable from the establishment it once opposed.

Reform looked and saw an opportunity to surf the wave of discontent without offering structural change.

Both are symptoms of the same disease – a broken economic system that concentrates power and wealth while preaching meritocracy and resilience to those left behind.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachael Swindon

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