Only a fool believes the political landscape will never change. As the Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan once told his aides: ‘There are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.’
As it happens, Callaghan said those words almost exactly four decades ago, as he was preparing to lose the 1979 election to Margaret Thatcher.
Perhaps the Tories should reflect on the irony that yesterday, which saw one of their most wretched electoral performances in recent times, was the 40th anniversary of one of their greatest landmarks, when Margaret Thatcher won her first General Election.
It is tempting, but perhaps too obvious, to suggest the Tories badly need another Mrs Thatcher, offering the same mixture of ideological vision, efficiency and ruthless pragmatism, as well as the same adeptness on television and grasp of public opinion.
Triumphant: Margaret Thatcher, flanked by husband Denis and son Mark, salutes the party faithful on May 4, 1979
The truth, however, is that the political landscape over which the Iron Lady presided has largely disappeared.
Voters today are angrier, more frustrated, less deferential. Influenced by social media more than ancestral loyalty, they are more likely to swing between extremes, and much more likely to be wooed by radical new groups.
A number of voters took to social media to boast of spoiling their ballot papers in the local elections. People shared images of voting slips with messages including ‘Get May out’, ‘Brexit betrayal’ and ‘Traitors’ written across them.
These are not normal times.
Despite the Tories taking a battering and Labour performing wretchedly, their spokesmen yesterday robotically intoned prepared lines about their determination to listen and learn from voters’ frustrations. But if the two main parties think things will soon return to normal, they are deceiving themselves.
For with Brexit having rewritten the rules of British politics, I believe these local elections are a last warning for the two historic parties of government.
Unless something changes radically, the local elections may well go down in history as the first part of a three or four-act drama that could reshape the landscape of British politics to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
And with European elections likely to follow on May 23, and a possible General Election or second referendum to come, both the Conservatives and Labour are in serious danger of being torn apart completely.
Conservative MP Vicky Ford after the Tories lost a comfortable majority in Chelmsford, Essex
Much of this story, of course, is about Brexit. For as soon as the unholy alliance of ultra-Remainers and hard Brexiteers torpedoed Theresa May’s deal with Brussels, it was pretty obvious the public would exact revenge at the ballot box.
The Prime Minister can hardly blame them. For almost three years, she has assured us that her priority is to deliver Brexit. Yet the original deadline for leaving the EU has come and gone, and she has conspicuously failed to do so.
This is not entirely her fault. If all Tory MPs had backed her withdrawal deal, their party would surely not be in such a mess. But the British people are perfectly entitled to conclude that many Tory MPs have completely lost the plot, and are more interested in ideological posturing and self-promotion than in reaching a compromise in the national interest.
It is true, of course, that Conservative governments often do badly in local elections.
It is generally forgotten, for example, that David Cameron lost a whopping 2,000 council seats between 2012 and 2014, but still won an overall majority at the next General Election.
Yet if the Tories think they can easily repeat the trick, then they are even more deluded than I thought.
Whatever you think of Mr Cameron, his government gave an impression of competence and unity. By contrast, these abysmal results come against a background of unprecedented Tory divisions, infighting and paralysis.
No wonder that, among the public at large, frustration and anger are running higher than at any time I can remember.
Leave voters, in particular, are outraged that Britain’s exit from the EU seems to have been delayed indefinitely. But many Remain voters, too, can barely contain their exasperation with a Government that seems incapable of winning a vital vote in the Commons.
The one consolation for the Tories is that Labour is doing equally badly. For while governments almost always lose council seats, it is extraordinary to see the main Opposition party haemorrhaging seats, too.
In other circumstances, Labour might expect to be celebrating a tremendous night.
Under Ed Miliband in 2012, Labour won more than 800 seats. Yet on Thursday, facing a far weaker Tory Government, it lost at least 87 seats, which suggests it would find it very hard to win a majority at a General Election.
Labour’s performance in many working-class Leave areas was astonishingly bad.
It is tempting, but perhaps too obvious, to suggest the Tories badly need another Mrs Thatcher, offering the same mixture of ideological vision, efficiency and ruthless pragmatism, as well as the same adeptness on television and grasp of public opinion
In the West Midlands it lost control of Dudley, while the Tories gained control of Walsall.
And in the North East, Labour lost control of Hartlepool, shed seats in Sunderland and lost the mayoralty of Middlesbrough to an independent.
The explanation is no mystery.
Labour’s flagrant dishonesty on Brexit has disgusted Leave voters, who rightly suspect most Labour MPs would like to pretend the referendum result never happened.
Yet at the same time, Jeremy
