OPINION

       Until the Labour Party changes, it fights Reform with its hands tied behind its back (Image: Henry Nicholls/PA Wire)

       Labour didn’t just lose the local elections last week, they got humiliated. Reform didn’t sneak in through the back door; they kicked it off the hinges, grinning. And what they’re planning to do with the councils they gained control of should scare anyone who still believes politics is about building something better.

       The locals gave Reform UK a Mayoralty and county-wide control across Lincolnshire, and in return, they promised the region a reckoning. The new Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, Andrea Jenkyns, never one to miss a headline, stormed into office vowing to sack all “DEI officers.” One problem. There aren’t any.

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       No army of wokery hiding in the bushes of Boston or plotting in the parish halls of Grantham.

       I suppose she could sack the inclusion staff. You know, the people who fill in the cracks when the system fails?

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       In Reform's eyes, even plain old simple inclusion – without diversity and equity – is some sort of political correctness gone mad.

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       This isn't about policy. It's not even about ideology. It’s about resentment dressed as governance. A bonfire of imagined enemies, built from whatever's lying around.

       DEI officers. Council staff. Wind turbines. Electric cars. Solar farms. Everything that smells like the 21st century gets tossed on the flames. And it’s workers who are going to get burned.

       Farage and Tice have spent the last few months frothing about pylons, solar panels, battery storage systems – because nothing says 'man of the people' like sabotaging the infrastructure that keeps bills down. They hate them. Ugly! Useless! Scam!

       They want “our green and pleasant land” back – code for brown fields, broken roofs, and a power grid that collapses every time there’s a frost.

       Here’s the irony that sticks in the throat like a warm pint on a cold day: it’s the working class – skilled engineers, line workers, construction crews, maintenance techs, electricians – who are building that green infrastructure.

       I know they grew up rich and went to posh private schools, but who do they really think installs a battery storage unit? Ghosts? Who lays solar panels across the roofs of warehouses and schools? Who erects pylons and pulls the cabling to keep the lights on? It’s labour. Grit under the nails, high-viz jacket, union sticker on your helmet labour. And Reform want to scrap it all because it offends their delicate aesthetic.

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       And let’s be clear: when Reform rails against solar farms and storage hubs, they’re not just taking a swing at policy – they’re putting thousands of skilled jobs on the line.

       We’re talking welders, scaffolders, site managers, haulage drivers, apprentices fresh out of college – whole teams of working-class people finally earning decent pay on long-term green projects.

       Projects that are regenerating old industrial estates, bringing money back into forgotten towns, and giving young people a reason to work.

       Scrapping that isn’t just short-sighted, it’s economic vandalism dressed up as culture war. It’s all luddite theatre, designed to look like rebellion but built on pure nostalgia.

       And the damage won’t stop in Lincolnshire. If this spreads, it’s Britain’s energy transition – our shot at energy independence, skilled jobs, and lower bills – that ends up on the chopping block.

       All because a few men in cravats think an EV charger looks ugly next to their Range Rover.

       They’ve also banned flags on the council buildings they now run – except for the Union Jack and the St George’s Cross. Sounds patriotic, until you realise it means councils can’t fly their county flags anymore. Lincolnshire’s own banner? Gone.

       Yorkshire’s white rose, Cornwall’s black and white cross, even the Royal Standard if the King pops round for a visit – BANNED. That’s not patriotism. That’s culture war cosplay so lazy it can’t tell the difference between a community’s identity and a novelty tea towel. And yet it was these clowns that cleaned up in the elections.

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       Let’s not pretend this was inevitable. Labour lost the local elections because it didn’t connect with the working class well enough. Labour played it safe – offering competence without conviction, management without meaning. But you can’t out-administer a movement built on fury and fire. Keir Starmer and must learn this lesson to truly unseat Reform.

       His party has to show people a future that feels worth fighting for, and who’s going to build it. You have to look a scaffolder in the eye and say: “There’s a job for you – but it’s in the world we’re trying to build, not the one we’ve already lost.”

       Because make no mistake: Reform isn’t offering new jobs or better schools. It’s offering a tantrum. A performative bonfire of things they don’t understand and don’t want to. And the fuel is all of us. It’s our infrastructure, our diversity officers, our schools, our energy future. It’s the people working in council back offices who’ll get purged not because they’ve done anything wrong, but because they were easy to name in a Facebook meme.

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       Farage, Jenkyns, and Tice aren’t rebels – they’re career reactionaries cosplaying as outsiders. They don’t want to tear down the establishment. They want to join it, wave from the balcony, and blame you when the bills land.

       Labour needs to stop cowering and start calling this what it is: a con. It’s political scrap metal – welded from old slogans and new grudges, heading nowhere fast. And in places like Lincolnshire, people aren’t rejecting the future – they’re reacting to being shut out of it.

       And they won’t come back for silence wrapped in abstract data and PowerPoint decks.