How Labour lost 1200+ Councillors

Labour lost more than 1,200 councillors in the local elections, and I think it settles something: we now live in a multi-party country. People are fed up with the two-party system, and the results showed it from Wales to Lewisham.

I broke it all down with a fellow Jamaican, a brother who slid into my DMs a while back asking what camera I use. We recorded it at The Lodge Studios in East London, and we tried to be fair to every side, including the parties neither of us would necessarily vote for.

What actually happened across the country

The SNP held on in Scotland. That was despite the controversy around Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, and despite Humza Yousaf's pro-Palestinian voice not seeming to reflect the Scottish electorate.

Wales was the real earthquake. Labour have controlled Wales since devolution, and it's home to some of their most powerful figures, Lord Kinnock included. That's gone.

In England, it went like this:

The red wall: Barnsley and Sunderland, hammered.
Birmingham: a Labour stronghold now split between Reform, Greens, Independents, Conservatives and Labour.
Lewisham: went Green.
Lambeth: home of the housing minister, Steve Reed, and Labour lost control.
Croydon: the Conservatives held the mayoralty by the skin of their teeth.
Havering went Reform and Barnet went Conservative.

Why Nigel Farage is cutting through

I posted a TikTok the day after the votes were counted and it got a lot of backlash. I said there's something about Nigel Farage the left can't replicate: he's charismatic. He's caught the temperature of what people are feeling, amplified it and spoken straight to it. People love something to blame, and he's given them something to get behind. Whether he ever delivers is another matter. The proof will be in the pudding.

I work in marketing, so I look at it that way. They say the best marketing speaks at an 11-year-old's reading level. I'm not saying Reform supporters read like 11-year-olds. I'm saying his message is simple and digestible, and the left struggles with that.

Too many people on the left carry a superiority complex: if you don't understand my point, you're bad or you're wrong. Not everyone who supports Reform is a far-right Nazi. Some are centrist or centre-right, and they could be convinced. The left doesn't market to those people. Add Keir Starmer's unpopularity and the cost of living, and the writing has been on the wall for Labour for about six months.

The policies people don't talk about

My co-host played devil's advocate here, and he was right to. We scroll social media and all we see is culture war. But Reform's manifesto has things in it that are attractive, especially if you run a business like I do:

Raising the VAT threshold from about £85k to £120k
Abolishing business rates for 1.2 million small and medium-sized businesses
300 front-line police officers per 100,000 people

I smiled when he read the VAT one out, because it does sound great. The UK is a hostile country to be self-employed or own a business in. Before all the stuff around Dubai and the wars, people were talking about the country losing something like a thousand millionaires a month, many of them heading to places like Dubai.

The criticism is that these policies help business owners and rich people, not the common man or woman. That's fair to debate. But I don't agree with people on the left who assume Reform voters never read the policies. A section of them must have. You can't do that well just by talking about immigrants.

The Greens did something similar in Lewisham, where Zoe Garbett is, as far as we know, the new mayor. Affordable housing is a big issue there. Homelessness seems to be rising quickly and social housing waiting lists appear to be growing. The Green manifesto was built around affordable and social housing, and it landed.

My co-host compared it to TV. We used to pick between Sky and Virgin. Now you get Disney Plus for the kids, Netflix for a series, and Apple TV if you want proper drama (his recommendation, not mine). Maybe politics is going the same way. People pick whatever suits their circumstances at the time, almost like dynamic pricing.

Why Labour feels like it's lost its identity

I think people have less loyalty to a party and more to the politics. When I was young, you had people who were Labour through and through and Conservative through and through. Now it's whoever is speaking to me.

That's why the Greens are eating into Labour's left. Labour doesn't feel like a left party at the minute, and a lot of that is down to how Starmer comes across. Being a politician now is like being a celebrity: how you talk matters.

When Farage was banging on about immigrants and getting more popular, Starmer gave a speech about being tougher on immigration, around the time of the digital ID row. I can't remember it word for word, but it made him look baseless. Are you left, are you right, are you centrist? Left-leaning Labour voters heard that and decided the Greens were more their style.

The Green leader is a great communicator, but I think he should have stayed out of the media before a local election. Some people say there was a smear campaign, that they were trying to do a Jeremy Corbyn on him. Interviewers went for gotchas on his national policies, which had nothing to do with a local vote. I think it cost the Greens in the last couple of weeks.

Good policies, but the economy is still squeezed

To be fair to Labour, my co-host listed things that are genuinely good:

The Employment Rights Act, including abolishing zero-hour contracts and statutory sick pay from day one. If you've got something like lupus and it flares up on your first day, that isn't your fault.
The Renters' Rights Act ending no-fault evictions. Landlords and tenants will disagree, but nobody should be forced out of their home without good reason.
NHS waiting lists at their lowest in three and a half years.

So why isn't it cutting through? Communication is part of it. Ask people why they don't like the Prime Minister and the best they've got is that he's boring to listen to.

The bigger reason is the economy. Furlough felt good at the time, but it was buy now, pay later. It was the country's Klarna. Borrowing went through the roof, and that takes a long time to pay back.

People are emotional, though. What they feel is that they can't afford a home, can't afford a holiday, wages are stagnant and graduate jobs are squeezed. Many are where they were at the start of the pandemic, or worse.

Labour ran on growth, growth, growth. With wars and whatever happens in America, it's not all their fault, but the economy hasn't grown. As my co-host put it, the party that focuses on economics wins the next general election. Gary from Gary's Economics says something similar: when people don't have money in their pockets, nobody's happy.

If the economy were growing and prices weren't going through the roof, I think Starmer would survive this. Without growth, every other shortcoming looks way worse. And we had 14 years of the Conservatives. Expecting someone to undo 14 years in two is like eating custard creams and doughnuts for 20 years and expecting to be in shape in six months.

Change the leader, or let him run?

The Mandelson scandal was still lingering, then the losses came, and everyone put their emotional hat on. Wes Streeting resigned. Every time I've seen him talk, I've felt he's always wanted to be Prime Minister.

People say Angela Rayner may back Andy Burnham, but Burnham has to get into Parliament first. I read on my way to the studio that Starmer might step aside for him, though I don't know how true that is. If it's Streeting against Burnham, I think Burnham wins, because with Streeting we might get more of the same.

My co-host made a good point: before you change the leader, do the audit. You learn the most from losses, not wins. He also said Starmer has handled international matters well, choosing not to jump into war with Iran. And the cabinet should be asked whether they've gone fast enough in their own departments. It's not all on one man.

We've switched Prime Ministers like Chelsea switch managers. My co-host blames social media: one-minute clips, the algorithm pushing cultural politics, and controversy selling way more than normal life ticking along. Our grandparents sent someone to the corner shop for a Sunday paper. Now the internet is gospel and everyone wants results now.

He also warned about the markets. Picture a more left-leaning Prime Minister, a worsening financial picture, more taxes and the bond markets reacting badly. Suddenly Farage's talk of a general election in 2027 isn't far-fetched. We saw with Liz Truss that the markets get a say.

Still, local success isn't national success, and turnout is different. Reform made inroads in Wales and Scotland but didn't win either, and didn't win London or Birmingham. As my co-host said, break it down and you're looking at a hung parliament.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'd let Starmer run with it a little longer. Have your leadership contest if you must, but every change means a new regime and a new cabinet. Whoever leads, Labour needs to decide what it is. Whether you liked Jeremy Corbyn or not, you knew it was a left-leaning party. Right now Labour is trying to win back voters from Reform and the Greens at the same time, and you can't win over everybody. Find your base, be firm and clear about what you can deliver, then deliver it in the next six to twelve months. If not, there will be problems.