Voters remain desperate for change of any kind, writes James Hanson

Sir Keir Starmer's record unpopularity has made the party electoral poison. The only question now is how long he survives.

But the results we’ve had so far aren’t just about the electorate’s discontent with the government. For at least a decade now, the British people have been voting for a change that has never come. Ever since the financial crash of 2008, living standards have fallen while prices have soared. As a result, since 2015 voters have taken every available opportunity to vent their fury.

The Brexit referendum in 2016 was a rebellion against the status quo. Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise over-performance in 2017 was two fingers up to the powers that be. Boris Johnson’s success in 2019 was another, as was Labour’s landslide two years ago. And now this.

So, as much as Reform, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP will attempt to claim these results are a ringing endorsement of their leaders and policies, the truth is actually much simpler. Voters are increasingly desperate and are prepared to support anyone who embodies a break from the norm.

That leaves one big underlying question: can anyone deliver the change people yearn for - and what does that even look like? If you ask me, the root of our problems is not so much that Britain is broken, it’s that Brits are broke. For almost two decades now, the cost of living has been a constant pressure, with wages stagnating while inflation goes up.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that issues like immigration have become so pertinent. It’s not that Brits are instinctively hostile to those who wish to make a better life here. It’s just that in times of scarcity, people are wary of new arrivals taking a slice of an ever-decreasing pie.

As such, the only answer is to expand the pie - meaning to get the economy growing again and living standards rising. Self-evidently, that is easier said than done, and shown by the fact that equivalent European economies are grappling with exactly the same problem.

What adds to the challenge is that delivering change takes time, and the public’s patience is exhausted. Downing Street likes to claim that Starmer’s government is making steady headway on the issues that matter most to voters. But even if that’s true, his spectacular failure to communicate any sense of progress underlines why his position is increasingly untenable.

You’ll hear a lot of Westminster psycho-babble this weekend about the winners and losers of these elections. But as the parties take to the airwaves to spin the results, remember this: the British people are reaching the point where they’ll vote for anyone who promises change. So it’s not really a victory for Farage, or the nationalists, or the Greens. It’s a defeat for the status quo and a guttural scream for life to be easier again.

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Listen to James Hanson on LBC on weekends between 4 and 7am.

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