UK local elections: Starmer’s betrayal of voters is handing England to Reform
Reform, Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing party, has just swept local elections across England, while the Labour party - only 10 months after winning a majority in a general election - suffered its worst results in many decades.
“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 1 May by just six votes.
On every doorstep it was Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s winter fuel payment and benefit cuts that voters were angry about, Labour sources told the BBC. Labour’s 14,700 vote majority in the northwest 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 so much voting for Reform’s anti-immigrant policies, as they were voting against Starmer’s Tory-blue Labour ones.
Reform’s policies can be boiled down to "freezing immigration" and stopping small boat arrivals - the only route for most people fleeing wars to arrive in the UK, since safe routes don’t exist.
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The party, with support from the right-wing media, have convinced many that this policy will solve the UK’s many deep-seated crises - from NHS waiting lists, homelessness, and stagnating wages.
They also campaign against green energy policies, backing fossil fuel expansion as a way to reduce energy costs (ignoring the huge profiteering of the energy sector).
By continuing Conservative austerity policies and making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the lack of growth in the UK’s economy, Starmer must carry the can
In one of the most extreme turnarounds, former mining heartland Durham saw Reform sweep the county taking 65 council seats, with Labour losing 38 and the Conservatives 15.
In Derbyshire, Labour dropped to fourth place with just 6 percent of the vote, while Reform got 37 percent, sweeping the council.
The Conservatives suffered an even worse set of results than Labour. The Tories lost all 15 of the councils they were defending with Reform taking over 10.
The two party system is dead.
Labour held on to several regional mayoralties in Tyneside, Doncaster and the West of England which is a small consolation for Starmer. But overall this is catastrophic for the prime minister.
Mainstream media are focusing on Reform’s successes, rather than the reasons for Labour’s failure.
Made by Starmer
Make no mistake, these dire results for Labour are down to Starmer’s betrayal of the electorate. By continuing Conservative austerity policies and making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the lack of growth in the UK’s stagnant economy, Starmer must carry the can. The media gave Starmer a very easy ride in the run up to last year's elections, but the game is now up.
He may limp on as prime minister, but hundreds of recently elected Labour MPs must be thinking 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 UK’s housing crisis spirals.
This is not what people voted for last July.
Just like the Tories
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 in Lincolnshire, where Reform swept the election. “Yeah, nothing really changes ever. You go from one bunch of lying so-and-so's 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 from anybody. Nobody likes any of the candidates.”
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.”
Follow the money
As long as major parties take large donations from wealthy donors with an interest in maintaining an economy that is skewed to the 1 percent richest, politics in the UK will not serve the interests of the vast majority.
If we "follow the money" it’s clear that, like the Conservatives and Reform, Labour has accepted large donations from millionaire donors with special interests: hedge fund millionaire Martin Taylor, with millions in private healthcare, has given £5m to Labour; Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund Quadrature Capital (donations of £4m) invests in fossil fuel industries, private health and arms, including ExxonMobil, Northrop Grumman and the notorious tech firm Palantir; Gary Lubner (£4.5m) is a South African-born Israel supporter.
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. These are the causes of the British security state.
For now, Reform are in the ascendant and, if nothing changes, Nigel Farage’s party could form the next government of the UK.
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 £420bn ($557bn) 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 crisis and crumbling public services 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 America, this kind of systemic crisis gave US President Donald Trump his second term. Like Labour, Joe Biden’s Democrats were so cut off from ordinary people’s concerns that they offered no remedies to the electorate, just bromides about economic growth.
Interestingly, the Starmer government’s decision to take control of Scunthorpe steelworks was the only Labour policy that people in the North East supported.
Change or die
This is the clear message to Labour coming out of the local elections: change course now and start delivering real change for working-class voters, or die.
Starmer has done the job his backers wanted: gutting the Labour Party that he inherited from Jeremy Corbyn and destroying the left
But 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.
On Saturday he chose Rupert Murdoch’s Times, behind a paywall, to refocus on his “growth mission” and to pledge cuts to immigration, leaning into Reform’s terrain. This strategy has already failed.
As an apparatchik more at home in Davos and at Nato meetings than talking to ordinary voters, Starmer has done the job his backers wanted: gutting the Labour Party that he inherited from Jeremy Corbyn with half a million members and popular policies, and destroying the left.
The claim that he was electable has proven to be a one off, now having sunk the party to 20 percent based on the local elections. Some now predict he will be gone before the next election, very likely handing the country to Reform.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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