Britain is sending Labour a message. Will they listen?

Where I live in Greater Manchester, Reform has taken every available seat in Wigan, 13 of 21 in Salford, and 18 of 19 in Tameside. But the picture is more complex than Reform gains. Local election results aren’t all counted overnight; results are still arriving. In diverse, urban areas with high graduate populations, Labour is losing to the Greens. As Manchester’s results trickle in, Labour’s seats are predominantly going Green.

Similarly, there’s been a 24-point swing to the Greens from Labour for the mayor of historically red Hackney, and predictions indicate big swings to the SNP and Plaid Cymru across Scotland and Wales, respectively. Labour’s vote share is being eroded from all sides of the political spectrum.

What unites these different votes? Ordinary people’s shared grievances: the cost-of-living, housing, transport, and a sense of unfairness. Across the country, people want the wealthiest to pay what they owe in tax, with money going to local communities and proper support for schools, hospitals and social care. Thanks to his failures on this front, Starmer is one of the three most unpopular British Prime Ministers on record.

Out of this chaos emerges inevitable speculation about leadership. Andy Burnham is Greater Manchester's Mayor, the country’s most popular politician and a major contender. And he reportedly said this week that a backbench MP will stand aside to help him mount a leadership challenge. His popularity is earned: he brought Greater Manchester’s buses back into public control, and has fought for the North against a Westminster machine that treats us as an afterthought. Sortition Foundation’s recent Greater Manchester polling shows that Mancunians trust him more than their local councils, MPs, and political parties.

But Sortition’s polling reveals something more striking: people trust their own communities over any politician, however good. The most popular figure in British politics still trails behind ordinary people's faith in each other. Even our most popular politicians are in politics as a career, and therefore make decisions that leave ordinary people behind.

Our country deserves better than Westminster personality politics. A new Labour leader - however well-liked - will face the same structural pressures as Starmer. The current system is rigged in favour of vested interests and billionaires.

Which is why, alongside national democratic reform, we should give people a direct say closer to home. One way to do this is to establish a powerful and permanent Citizens' Assembly for Greater Manchester: a deliberative body, like a jury, made up of a cross-section of local people, paid to participate and empowered to scrutinise decisions, hear expert evidence, and propose policies. Sortition’s polling shows that a majority of Greater Manchester residents support the idea, and Citizens’ Assemblies are already successfully run all over the world. They build trust in politics, trust in outcomes, and make decisions that serve the interests of the many.

We need more than a new face at the top: we need power from below.

____________________

Liv Ouwehand is from the Sortition Foundation. She speaks on local democracy and devolution, and she is campaigning for a Greater Manchester Citizens’ Assembly.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk