𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

When you actually leave Westminster and ask people what they think of the country, the first thing that hits you is not rage. It’s drift. Over the last few days, I travelled through Boston, Peterborough, Newcastle and Sunderland, asking people a simple set of questions: is Britain heading in the right direction; what feels worse than five or ten years ago, whether politicians understand their lives, and why so many voters are moving away from the mainstream parties? Not one person told me Britain is heading in the right direction.

That does not mean everyone agreed on every policy, or that they all wanted the same political answer. They didn’t. But the mood was remarkably consistent: the country feels directionless, its leadership feels weak, and politics feels like a series of endless U-turns.

Keir Starmer was described to me, more than once, as exceptionally spineless. That may sound harsh, but it reflects something important. People are not just frustrated by bad outcomes. They are frustrated by the feeling that they are being managed, talked down to, and fed simplified slogans instead of honest arguments.

Complex problems are routinely flattened into messaging exercises, which only makes the government look evasive and less competent.

That trust gap matters because it colours everything else, especially immigration and integration.

In Peterborough and Boston, I found myself repeatedly struggling to interview people in town centres because I simply could not find enough English speakers. I ended up loitering around the cathedrals in both places just to find people I could actually speak to properly.

That is not an abstract culture-war talking point. It is a practical change in how public space functions. If people living in the same town cannot easily communicate with one another, integration is not keeping pace with demographic change. And what you end up seeing is parallel lives in shared geography, much like an airport waiting lounge.

Yet Labour still seems unable to discuss this plainly. Too often the response is to reach for the usual script about “diversity” and “tolerance”, as if repeating approved words can substitute for a serious conversation about social cohesion and a shared national identity.

But as we have seen with the rise of Reform, Labour ignores such concerns at its own peril.

If they want to avoid potential extinction, it’s worth taking a leaf out of Denmark’s book.

Denmark’s Social Democratic party held onto power, not by scolding voters or pretending that anxiety about migration and integration was a racist media fantasy, but by adjusting to public sentiment and governing accordingly. It confronted failed integration directly, enacting laws designed to break up ethnic ghettos and so-called “parallel societies” rather than allowing them to become permanent features of national life, as we’ve seen in many parts of this country.

They showed what a healthy democracy looks like – one that responds before voters decide to take radical action.

And that brings us to Reform. Among the interviewees who mentioned Reform, there was far less enthusiasm than social media might suggest. The scepticism about the party centred on the fact that they don’t yet resemble a serious governing outfit and, with all the recent defections, seem more like another version of the same Tory party voters overwhelmingly rejected in 2024.

The significance of this for Labour is not just that Reform is sweeping up every disillusioned voter. It’s that Labour is presiding over a broader collapse in confidence, including among people who still do not fully trust the insurgent option.

I also filmed outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, the migrant hotel that became the focal point of last year’s anti-immigration protests after a resident sexually assaulted a teenage girl in the town. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The hotel was boarded up, with gates outside. Security guards inside were escorting residents back onto the premises.

Whatever your politics, images like that harden public opinion quickly. In a country already dealing with weak growth, strained services and high migration, they reinforce the sense that border control is reactive rather than controlled. People look at a place like that and conclude the state can still impose rules, just not for their benefit.

That is the real audit of Labour emerging from these towns. Voters are asking for some direction, leaders who actually mean what they say, and a government willing to describe obvious problems in plain English.

As for the Gorton and Denton by-election tomorrow, it will undoubtedly be a test of whether Labour can still rely on tribal loyalty in places where trust is thinning. And a warning shot to the party about just how sick voters are with the current state of affairs.