You didn’t win. You defaulted. The 2024 election wasn’t a triumph, it was a procession of people voting for the least damaging option because every other choice stank. Labour came back with fewer votes than in 2019. Turnout cratered. Belief nosedived. And your party limped into power on a technicality. That’s not a mandate. It’s a vacancy.
You’re not bleeding votes because of bad messaging. It’s policy. People see you replaying the same austerity script that gutted their communities last time around. You floated means-testing Winter Fuel Allowance then walked it back after the backlash. That wasn’t pragmatism. It was exposure. You showed people exactly where your instincts lie. Austerity with a softer accent. Cutting disability benefits? Same hammer, different hand. Labour used to understand what that means. Now it’s just spreadsheets in managed decline.
People aren’t reading your manifesto. They’re reading final demand notices. They’re staring at another rent increase, skipping meals, and watching their lives degrade while you polish your talking points for the next PR cycle. Reform isn’t rising because it’s right. It’s rising because it speaks to people who are sick of politics as inventory management.
You had the space to lead. You chose to retreat. You claim there’s a £20bn black hole like it was some kind of surprise. It wasn’t. It was forecasted, flagged, and reported. The last government hemorrhaged billions on fraud, mates’ contracts, and military spikes. You knew that. So stop pretending you were ambushed by reality. You walked right into it.
The betrayal isn’t the shortfall; it’s the excuse. You knew what you were inheriting. The lie is pretending otherwise. You’re not losing because you lack ideas; you’re losing because you’ve lost belief. Your party doesn’t even act like it wants to change anything. It just wants to manage the decline gracefully, as if the best we can hope for is a softer landing on the way down.
People aren’t waiting for you to find your backbone anymore. They’ve moved on.
And they’re building what you refuse to.
In Preston, in the North East, in Manchester, people are proving that real change happens locally, not through soundbites, but through actual investment. Through trust. Through direct action. Labour isn’t part of that. It’s an obstacle to it.
While you sandbag the damage, people are rebuilding. Quietly. Efficiently. Without waiting for permission or for Westminster to catch up. It’s happening. And you’re deliberately looking the other way.
You talk about communities fraying, about “lost connection.” But that wasn’t a natural collapse, it was engineered. Fragmented cities, dying town centres, decaying high streets—these weren’t the result of apathy; they were signed off and sold out. Decades of neoliberal policies, Tory and Labour alike, eroded every layer of community until the connections that held us together snapped. You don’t get to lament isolation when you handed them the bricks and called it progress.
And you’re still doing it. Doubling settlement requirements? That’s not border control it’s capitulation. You’re gutting the foundations from the very people holding this country together - the ones you refuse to fund, don’t understand, and still try to control. It’s betrayal dressed up as pragmatism.
Legitimacy isn’t conferred from the top down. It rises up from people already holding their communities together while your system drags its feet and claims credit for scraps. You don’t have anyone around you who understands that. Your cabinet is stuffed with people who know how to win headlines, not how to rebuild. They don’t know what survives contact with the real world because they’ve never had to live in it.
Labour doesn’t fix anything anymore; it just sandbags the damage. It’s terrified of conflict. Obsessed with avoiding mistakes instead of pursuing change. You’re not surrounded by builders. You’re surrounded by careerists. They don’t see the collapse coming because they’re too busy preparing for their next pivot. This isn’t a campaign anymore. It’s collapse. And you’re still playing it like a PR exercise.
You want to see the real alternative? It’s already there. North East co-ops. Manchester. Preston. They’re building what you refuse to fund, don’t understand, and still try to control. Local, decentralised, community-led. The work is happening where you refuse to look. You can spin the numbers. You can adjust the talking points. But the truth is right there on the ground. And it’s happening with or without you.
Your father was a toolmaker. He knew you don’t just turn up with tools, you turn up with the right ones. Right now, your cabinet is a toolkit full of spanners trying to fix circuitry. You don’t have what’s needed to repair what’s coming, and you don’t even see it.
You’ve got your toolkit, Keir. But it’s full of spanners. You’re still pretending it’s enough, and it never was.
It’s not. It never was. And you were the only one who didn’t notice.
You don’t fix a fractured country with the same broken tools. And right now, that’s all you’ve got.
Stop waiting for Westminster’s permission. It’s already happening; quietly, locally, without their blessing. If you want to see real rebuilding, it’s right outside your door.
Join it. Build it. Take back the power they’ve squandered.
Written early May 2025. Updated 22 May.