We now pay about 8% of government revenue to debt interest, we have had a significant rise on the costs of pensions as retirees has boomed and we have had a major jump in costs for health care. So we have 3 pretty fixed outgoing go up significantly while GDP per capita has been flat. Governments went on a huge immigration binge to try to fix some of that, population jumped 2 million in 3 years from 2021 to 2023. That is about 3% of population in 3 years.
So the country is very angry as services have massively declined in the past 18 years, immigration has been very significant, house building has been weak so there has been huge increases in housing costs, energy has gone up massively, a general inflation and the pound is weaker than it was.
The politicians have spent years promising a bright future and delivering a shit sandwich.
Faith in Starmer was brittle and he seems to neither fully articulate the issues, nor fix them. So he is left looking like a continuation of the Tories with no real change in trajectory. (there have been some improvements i.e. immigration is less insane).
Orixil on
The Brits have really learned all the wrong lessons from Brexit.
marcus55 on
People on reddit will look at these numbers and still continue to be confused. definition of echo chamber
cyclingkingsley on
Brits 🤝 US
Together we don’t learn our lessons
[deleted] on
[removed]
stevs23 on
Great. More far right fuck wits to fuck the planet up more. What is wrong with people
Jabronie100 on
The people are rising against the globalists mass immigration scheme, this is a great thing.
willywam on
Important to note these are LOCAL elections (as opposed to parliamentary/general elections), so this is less impactful than the headline makes it out to be. Local governments (e.g. X County Council, Y Borough Council etc.) control things like local transport, bin collection, social care.
The parliamentary elections for the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland are also ongoing but as I’m writing this we don’t have the results, although it is expected that Labour will lose control of the Welsh Senedd (parliament) for the first time.
Labour’s control of the UK government will be officially untouched by these elections, but this will be used as a strong indication of dissatisfaction and so Labour may choose to remove Starmer as leader and therefore PM, and their credibility to continue the path they are currently on will be damaged.
Corduroy_Sazerac on
As politics professor Rob Ford said: [He posted this last night. I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but… Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle And these within the last hour. A caveat to this – in strongly Leave areas Reform are now so dominant (with 40% plus of the vote) they can typically win without much split in their opponents. But in more mixed Lab places, what we see is Reform up most, Greens up a lot, Lab and Con both down. Reform then take the seat from Lab The conclusion “Reform won the seat from Lab therefore biggest vote swing is Lab to Reform” does not follow from this pattern. There are multiple vote flows here: Lab to Grn, Lab to abstain, Lab to Ref, Con to Ref, abstain to Ref…Lab to Ref is only one part of this, not typically the largest..”](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/07/elections-2026-local-scotland-wales-reform-green-labour-conservatives-live-news-updates)
Rare_Pirate4113 on
Rightly or wrongly, people are concerned about mass immigration and see it as the reason why cost of living has increased (which is partially true). The Tories didn’t confront it, Labour aren’t confronting it, so people are voting for the party that claims they will.
Dapper__Viking on
The ‘hard right’ would stop winning seats across Europe tomorrow if the centrist parties could just stop with their deranged immigration numbers.
The U.K. services are in shambles and there are significant growing pains from the extremely high levels of migration in such a short time.
If the moderate parties could just have moderate policies with respect to immigration, the ‘hard right’ movement will fall in on itself within a year.
FarAd2857 on
You can lead a horse to water, but that horse might just drown itself because it spends too much time on Twitter
ShermansFieldOrder66 on
Another election like this and they’ll be joining another war.
OldLondon on
Note that this is local councils of which there are around 400 and while reform have gained seats they’ve only gained overall control of 3 out of 400 councils. So not really the massive swing the media will have you believe. My council for example they gained 2 seats out of 25 but basically still have no say in what happens
ManFeelings9000 on
You can even see it now, people down playing this and saying it won’t translate to national elections, it’s nothing to do with immigration etc
Some people just don’t ever fucking learn and then it’ll be shock.
fairiestoldmeto on
I really hope this prompts Labour to bring in voting reform, my preference would be the Ranked Alternative Vote system. We really seem to have left behind a strict two party system so for both left and right the AV system would allow us to really vote for who we want without having to do tactical voting.
Svedjemarker on
Fool me once, it’s on you, fool me twice….
Cakeski on
Just a reminder to all those outside of the UK.
These were votes for England’s mayoral positions and council seats, Scotland’s Devolved Parliment (SMPs) and Wale’s Senedd (Also Devolved parliament) so basically who is going to be deciding when the potholes are going to be fixed, refuse collection in England.
And not when to set up the concentration camps.
TheBlueBlaze on
People need to understand that appeasing the anti-immigrant crowd from the left is a no-win scenario. There is no winning platform that magically balances compassion and cruelty, because both sides will say that it doesn’t go far enough.
At this point, the winning strategy is to find a non-immigrant force to demonize, perhaps one that’s *more* responsible for the economic problems that people face, and run on fighting them with just as much vigor.
Populist parties win by saying “that guy over there is responsible for all your problems, I’m gonna go punch them”. And if the right is going to punch down, the left could at least try running on punching up.
Artemisbleachedmod on
The world is fucked
Livelih00d on
Watch Labour learn all the wrong lessons from this.
Unable-Economics9223 on
Honestly a good thing that they won a lot of local elections so that they prove their incompetence by the time the general election comes along
riddlemethiscnt on
They never learn
CrownOfBlondeHair on
Ever since Brexit I’ve thought little better of the British than I have the Americans. Something about pride in a failed empire just isn’t good for a country.
RandomZombieGamer on
Reform are nothing more than the Tory party’s far right leaning drunk uncle.
They will still line the pockets of their mates, and go after the poor and disabled.
The only difference will be the lie that they will provide mass immigration. Won’t happen. Isn’t possible.
Reforms demographic is the ignorant and the uninformed and unfortunately there is a growing amount in the UK right now.
Yes immigration is a huge issue in the UK but Reform is offering false promises. I just hope common sense comes before a general election.
27 Comments
I thought the Brits are unhappy with Brexit. Now they want to vote for the Brexit party?
So they are watching what is happening to the US and think it’s a good thing?
[https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/timeseries/lzvb/prdy](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/timeseries/lzvb/prdy)
We have had flat labour productivity since 2008
The UKs GDP per capita has been about as good as or better than almost all the other non US G7 nations.
[https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/GBR/DEU/CAN/FRA/ITA/JPN](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/GBR/DEU/CAN/FRA/ITA/JPN)
We now pay about 8% of government revenue to debt interest, we have had a significant rise on the costs of pensions as retirees has boomed and we have had a major jump in costs for health care. So we have 3 pretty fixed outgoing go up significantly while GDP per capita has been flat. Governments went on a huge immigration binge to try to fix some of that, population jumped 2 million in 3 years from 2021 to 2023. That is about 3% of population in 3 years.
So the country is very angry as services have massively declined in the past 18 years, immigration has been very significant, house building has been weak so there has been huge increases in housing costs, energy has gone up massively, a general inflation and the pound is weaker than it was.
The politicians have spent years promising a bright future and delivering a shit sandwich.
Faith in Starmer was brittle and he seems to neither fully articulate the issues, nor fix them. So he is left looking like a continuation of the Tories with no real change in trajectory. (there have been some improvements i.e. immigration is less insane).
The Brits have really learned all the wrong lessons from Brexit.
People on reddit will look at these numbers and still continue to be confused. definition of echo chamber
Brits 🤝 US
Together we don’t learn our lessons
[removed]
Great. More far right fuck wits to fuck the planet up more. What is wrong with people
The people are rising against the globalists mass immigration scheme, this is a great thing.
Important to note these are LOCAL elections (as opposed to parliamentary/general elections), so this is less impactful than the headline makes it out to be. Local governments (e.g. X County Council, Y Borough Council etc.) control things like local transport, bin collection, social care.
The parliamentary elections for the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland are also ongoing but as I’m writing this we don’t have the results, although it is expected that Labour will lose control of the Welsh Senedd (parliament) for the first time.
Labour’s control of the UK government will be officially untouched by these elections, but this will be used as a strong indication of dissatisfaction and so Labour may choose to remove Starmer as leader and therefore PM, and their credibility to continue the path they are currently on will be damaged.
As politics professor Rob Ford said: [He posted this last night. I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but… Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle And these within the last hour. A caveat to this – in strongly Leave areas Reform are now so dominant (with 40% plus of the vote) they can typically win without much split in their opponents. But in more mixed Lab places, what we see is Reform up most, Greens up a lot, Lab and Con both down. Reform then take the seat from Lab The conclusion “Reform won the seat from Lab therefore biggest vote swing is Lab to Reform” does not follow from this pattern. There are multiple vote flows here: Lab to Grn, Lab to abstain, Lab to Ref, Con to Ref, abstain to Ref…Lab to Ref is only one part of this, not typically the largest..”](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/07/elections-2026-local-scotland-wales-reform-green-labour-conservatives-live-news-updates)
Rightly or wrongly, people are concerned about mass immigration and see it as the reason why cost of living has increased (which is partially true). The Tories didn’t confront it, Labour aren’t confronting it, so people are voting for the party that claims they will.
The ‘hard right’ would stop winning seats across Europe tomorrow if the centrist parties could just stop with their deranged immigration numbers.
The U.K. services are in shambles and there are significant growing pains from the extremely high levels of migration in such a short time.
If the moderate parties could just have moderate policies with respect to immigration, the ‘hard right’ movement will fall in on itself within a year.
You can lead a horse to water, but that horse might just drown itself because it spends too much time on Twitter
Another election like this and they’ll be joining another war.
Note that this is local councils of which there are around 400 and while reform have gained seats they’ve only gained overall control of 3 out of 400 councils. So not really the massive swing the media will have you believe. My council for example they gained 2 seats out of 25 but basically still have no say in what happens
You can even see it now, people down playing this and saying it won’t translate to national elections, it’s nothing to do with immigration etc
Some people just don’t ever fucking learn and then it’ll be shock.
I really hope this prompts Labour to bring in voting reform, my preference would be the Ranked Alternative Vote system. We really seem to have left behind a strict two party system so for both left and right the AV system would allow us to really vote for who we want without having to do tactical voting.
Fool me once, it’s on you, fool me twice….
Just a reminder to all those outside of the UK.
These were votes for England’s mayoral positions and council seats, Scotland’s Devolved Parliment (SMPs) and Wale’s Senedd (Also Devolved parliament) so basically who is going to be deciding when the potholes are going to be fixed, refuse collection in England.
And not when to set up the concentration camps.
People need to understand that appeasing the anti-immigrant crowd from the left is a no-win scenario. There is no winning platform that magically balances compassion and cruelty, because both sides will say that it doesn’t go far enough.
At this point, the winning strategy is to find a non-immigrant force to demonize, perhaps one that’s *more* responsible for the economic problems that people face, and run on fighting them with just as much vigor.
Populist parties win by saying “that guy over there is responsible for all your problems, I’m gonna go punch them”. And if the right is going to punch down, the left could at least try running on punching up.
The world is fucked
Watch Labour learn all the wrong lessons from this.
Honestly a good thing that they won a lot of local elections so that they prove their incompetence by the time the general election comes along
They never learn
Ever since Brexit I’ve thought little better of the British than I have the Americans. Something about pride in a failed empire just isn’t good for a country.
Reform are nothing more than the Tory party’s far right leaning drunk uncle.
They will still line the pockets of their mates, and go after the poor and disabled.
The only difference will be the lie that they will provide mass immigration. Won’t happen. Isn’t possible.
Reforms demographic is the ignorant and the uninformed and unfortunately there is a growing amount in the UK right now.
Yes immigration is a huge issue in the UK but Reform is offering false promises. I just hope common sense comes before a general election.