CONSERVATIVE losses in Selby & Ainsty and Somerton & Frome underline the scale of the party’s problems.

They conjure up visions of a 1997-style rout. But that is not guaranteed. 

Dig into the figures and Tory voters may just be staying at home. Turnout in Selby & Ainsty was down 20,532 votes on 2019; the Tory vote fell by 21,700 votes, while Labour picked up less than 3,000, roughly equivalent to the drop in the Lib Dem vote. These stay-at-homes could easily swing the result at a general election.

Tory reverses should not be understated. The loss of two largely rural constituencies points to the party’s collapsing appeal in its heartlands. 

The government’s total subordination to banks and transnational corporations make it a less and less plausible champion of suburban and small-town England. 

We see it in the uproar from traditionally middle-class charities like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at Tory ecological vandalism; in near-universal disgust at the actions of privatised water companies, outrageous enough to provoke a mild-mannered state department like the Environment Agency into demanding jail sentences for the sector’s CEOs.

Worse still will be the impact of clinging to Bank of England orthodoxy and ratcheting up interest rates in a futile bid to control inflation driven by corporate profiteering. 

Prices are still rising fast. Britain hasn’t faced inflation like this since the early 1980s, at the very beginning of the neoliberal era: today’s population is far more indebted. 

Rising interest rates will make servicing those debts impossible for many households. Mortgage payments are shooting up, home repossessions rising. Rents are being hiked in an already extortionate private rental sector. Meanwhile, state (and Bank of England) policy remains focused on trying to hold pay down, so people have no way of meeting these growing expenses.

There are the ingredients here of a social catastrophe that could beggar families that consider themselves comfortably off and strike at the foundations of the “property-owning democracy” Thatcher saw as a guarantee against socialism.

The Tories are in a bind. A party in hock to big capital can no longer do its bidding while maintaining the living standards of a significant chunk of the British population. 

That’s good news, in the short term, for Labour. But that doesn’t mean much for ordinary people.

Labour has been caught in cahoots with private water companies seeking to maintain the status quo in the face of public anger. It does not oppose Tory wages policy or interest rate rises. 

It insists, in the teeth of the evidence, that privatisation does not undermine public services and that what’s good for big business is good for the rest of us: in short, there is no evidence a Labour government will raise your pay, lower your expenses or act in defence of the environment. 

The narrow loss in Uxbridge will probably accelerate its rightward march: the influence of the low emissions zone on the local vote could make a case to reduce car dependency by improving public transport, but will no doubt be taken as an argument against any action on the climate.

Things could be different. In 2017, when Labour offered real change, it also showed an ability to make strides in true-blue territory, winning Canterbury and seeing its vote soar in Tory heartlands like Cornwall and the Cotswolds (and Somerton & Frome, incidentally, where it has since collapsed). 

The notion that you have to be the Tories to win in Tory areas belongs to a dead-end politics that ignores the actual crises people want to see resolved. Worse, despite the pleas of Guardian columnists like Polly Toynbee to give Labour the benefit of the doubt, it is not an act. 

Unless the left can mount a real alternative, a change of government will do nothing to protect people from the worsening storm.