“They’ve gone back on everything they said they would do for the working class,” said a female voter speaking to the BBC after Reform defeated Labour in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection on May 1.

On every doorstep it was Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s winter fuel payment and benefit cuts that voters were angry about, a Labour source told the BBC. Labour’s 15,000-vote majority in the north-west England seat was wiped out.

And it was the same elsewhere, as Reform swept up Labour and Tory votes in local elections across England and Wales. People were not voting for Reform’s far right policies, they were voting against Starmer’s Tory-blue Labour.

In one of the most extreme turnarounds, Durham saw Reform sweep the city taking 65 council seats, with Labour losing 38 and the Conservatives 15. In Derbyshire Labour dropped to fourth place with 6 per cent, with Reform on 37 per cent, and sweeping the council.

Labour held on in several mayoral results in Tyneside, Doncaster and the West of England, which is a small consolation for Starmer. But overall this is catastrophic.

Mainstream media will focus on Reform’s successes, rather than the reason for Labour’s failure.

Make no mistake, these terrible results for Labour are down to Starmer’s betrayal of the electorate. By continuing Conservative austerity and making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the lack of growth in Britain’s anaemic economy, Starmer must carry the can. So much for turning the party around. He’s turned it into a zombie party on the road to oblivion.

He may limp on as prime minister, but hundreds of recently elected Labour MPs must be thinking that that their political careers are going to end at the next election unless the government drastically changes course.

Recent polling by the More in Common research group gave a flavour of what voters in the north of England are feeling about the government: betrayed and angry.

For many, the country is broken and no politician will fix it, since they appear to serve themselves or their financial backers, rather than the common good.

“They’re targeting the wrong people. Pensioners. The disabled. It seems to be the groups who can’t fight back, “ says Chris, a mechanic, to More in Common.

Starmer’s Labour has kept the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, axed the winter fuel allowance that was given to 10 million pensioners, and is going to cut billions from support for disabled people. It refuses to nationalise the broken privatised water system, or take action to cap rents as the housing crisis spirals. This is not what people voted for last July.

In a country of boarded-up high streets and food banks, people see no difference between the policies pursued by Starmer’s Labour Party and the Conservatives who he defeated at last year’s general election. In fact since 1979 and the victory of Margaret Thatcher, both parties have pursued policies to deregulate the economy in favour of corporations and the rich. Prime Minister Starmer is no different.

“I’ve actually given up on the system, if I'm being totally open and honest with you,” says Gary, a sales manager from Bourne who has been widely quoted. “Yeah, nothing really changes ever. You go from one bunch of lying so-and-sos to the next lot it would seem …This is going to sound really extreme but the country almost needs a coup-d’etat, and it needs somebody to almost come in and say, right, this is what we’re doing and you will conform... There’s no proper leadership by anybody. Nobody likes any of the candidates. Nobody really trusts any of them.”

Sam, a nurse from Scunthorpe, told More in Common: “The way [Starmer] speaks, the way he comes across when he’s interviewed. The way he speaks about the winter fuel allowance. I think he’s a disgrace, I think he’s ruthless. I don’t know what the difference is between them and the Tories, to be honest with you.”

As long as major parties take large donations from wealthy donors with an interest in maintaining an economy that only benefits the richest 1 per cent, politics in Britain will not serve the interests of the vast majority.

If we “follow the money” it’s clear that all major parties accept large donations from millionaire donors with interests such as private healthcare, climate-wrecking fossil fuel industries, and, in the case of Labour’s big donors (like Gary Lubner), Israel.

Starmer is consistent on one issue: defending Israel from accountability for its war crimes and genocide in Gaza. His other big focus is increasing British military spending, and putting boots on the ground in Ukraine. Neither of these are in line with the majority of the electorate’s views.

Reform no different

For now, Reform are in the ascendant and, if nothing changes, Nigel Farage’s party could form the next government of the country. The Conservatives, if anything, suffered a worse set of results than Labour. Leader Kemi Badenoch is not going to turn that around.

But voters disillusioned with Labour and the Tories will soon find that Reform is no different, or worse. In 2024 the Good Law Project revealed that three quarters of Reform’s donations since 2019 were linked to nine companies and individuals with offshore interests.

Reform, the Tories and Starmer’s Labour have all tried to disguise their refusal to tackle big issues, like the energy sector’s £420 billion profits since 2020, by focusing on migrants arriving in small boats. As if a few thousand people fleeing war zones in the Middle East and Africa are responsible for the crisis in the NHS, the energy price ripoff, and mass homelessness. But however dishonest, the message is working.  

The failure of our current political order to address urgent issues around the cost of living, crumbling public services, and lack of affordable housing is pushing the system toward breaking point. Unless people are given hope, as More in Common’s Luke Tryl says, this order is “unsustainable.”

In the US, this kind of systemic crisis gave Trump his second term.

Interestingly, the Starmer government’s decision to take control of Scunthorpe steelworks was the only decision taken by Labour that people in the north-east supported.

This is the clear message to Labour coming out of the local elections: change course now and start delivering real change, or die.

Keir Starmer has shown a striking disinterest in delivering what people want. It will just be more the same policies “further and faster,” he said on Friday. No admission that voters believed he was basically a Tory.

As an apparatchik more at home in Davos and at Nato meetings than talking to ordinary voters, politically he is a dead man walking. He’s done the job of destroying the Labour Party inherited from Jeremy Corbyn that had policies to give millions hope. His job is done.