“The votes cast this week are a thumping verdict for Starmer’s Labour leadership.”
By Matt Wrack, General Secretary of NASUWT
The local election results are a stark warning that the Labour government has lost the confidence of millions who voted for change in 2024 after 14 years of austerity under the Tories.
They voted for an end to policies that had wrecked public services, driven down pay, eroded and devalued public sector pensions and piled intolerable workloads onto workers across education and the wider public sector.
The pattern in these elections is uneven, but the reality is clear to see. A longer term shift is taking place among the electorate that may change politics fundamentally.
In former industrial communities that have been neglected for decades, we are seeing Labour lose ground to Reform and others because people simply do not believe that “more of the same” will rebuild their towns, their services or their lives.
Turnout tells its own story. With politics reduced to a narrow, managerial choice between different versions of the status quo, millions of working‑class people concluded that it is not about them. The so‑called “grown‑ups in the room” have completely misjudged the public mood. After years of crisis, the scale of what is needed is far bigger than the lack of vision currently on offer from Sir Keir Starmer and his Cabinet.
This is not just about competence or personal integrity, important as those are. The Peter Mandelson affair underlines that point. For more than 30 years, Peter Mandelson has been central to a project to turn Labour into a party that is absolutely safe for the establishment – a party where millionaires and big business can feel at home, and where the interests of finance and corporate power are never fundamentally challenged. This is the thread that runs through the approach of Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, Wes Streeting and much of the new intake of Labour MPs.
The local elections show the limits of that strategy. You cannot rebuild trust in politics while reassuring the corporations, the banks and the billionaires that nothing essential will change. You cannot revive communities laid waste by the Tories with press releases while refusing to commit to the scale of public investment they need. You cannot fix our schools, hospitals and councils while clinging to austerity‑era spending envelopes and outsourcing models that have already failed.
For the education workforce, for parents and pupils, this is not an abstract debate. They have seen how years of cuts have left schools struggling with crumbling buildings, rising needs and chronic staff shortages. Pay has fallen in real terms, workloads have spiralled, and support services have been hollowed out.
I see no prospect of any serious change from Starmer and most other potential candidates have no serious political differences from the failed approach of the past twenty-two months.
Trade unions should set out their own policies and demand implementation from whoever wants to lead the Labour government.
Rebuild public services with a serious, multi‑year funding settlement for councils, schools, the NHS and other core services, ending the era of managed decline.
Deliver new, unionised green jobs through public investment and public ownership where necessary, including in energy and transport, so that the transition is fair and benefits working‑class communities.
Strengthen trade union rights, including repealing anti‑union laws, introducing sectoral collective bargaining and implementing, in full and without dilution, a genuine New Deal for Workers.
Reverse outsourcing and privatisation, bringing services back in‑house so that public money funds public provision, not shareholder dividends.
Adopt a humane migration policy, recognising the contribution migrant workers make to public services, ending scapegoating and ensuring rights at work for all.
In education specifically, Labour should commit to restoring pay, tackling workload through enforceable limits, investing in SEND provision and support staff, and ending the fragmentation that has undermined democratic accountability.
Trade unions cannot afford to sit back and hope that these things happen by themselves. In this situation, we have to set out an alternative and fight for it – industrial, political and ideological. The early narratives about these elections will be contested. Some will say they prove that Labour must move further to the “centre”, further towards the comfort of big business.
The reality is the opposite. Where there is a bold offer to rebuild public services, raise living standards and shift power towards working people, there can be enthusiasm and hope.
But where there is caution and deference to the establishment, you get disillusionment and anger.
If Labour wants to change its fortunes it must now change course.
The votes cast this week are a thumping verdict for Starmer’s Labour leadership. It would be a serious mistake not to listen.
- Matt Wrack is the General Secretary of the NASUWT education union. You can follow him on Twitter/X.
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