Reform, Reclaim and UKIP made zero impact in the local elections. UKIP was not able to field many candidates. There just isn’t much enthusiasm for local politics and this is reflected in voter turnouts. The majority of people don’t even bother to vote.

Worryingly for us, the momentum of the so-called “revolt on the right” has collapsed.

But then I would venture that politics as a whole has collapsed and what we see in its place is ritualistic zombie politics, going through the motions as though we were still a democracy. Politics is realigning, largely on ethnic and regional lines, with the middle class retreating into green-tinged fantasy politics, that distance them from the real world.

In some cases, the voter turnout has increased, especially when the locals have grouped together to elect a Green. They are happy to fret about the "environment" and climate change, but don't want to deal with real life issues such as immigration. Not being able to cope with real life, they are retreating into a fantasy world of their own making. The middle class/millennials are entering a second childhood.

Personally, I have never been less invested in who came out on top in a local election. I don’t see that it matters. The moribund Conservative Party is failing on every count to tackle the concerns of ordinary people. They can perhaps claim to be marginally less dire than Labour, but that’s no comfort to those who see their country swamped by unwanted illegal immigration and worry that they can’t afford to heat their homes next winter.

Energy and food prices are rising, creating a financial crisis and the government’s response is to commit 30% of the UK’s land to “nature”, rewilding, etc., ban agricultural diesel. install eco-millionaires and their cronies into regulatory agencies and authorities, borrow more and more to pay for more green crap, and bring forward the ban ICE car sales. On top of that, Tory foreign policy is to escalate and prolong the war in Ukraine.

This starts to remind me of those Vietnam film where the firebase is overrun on all sides and the only choice is to call in an airstrike on your own position. I start to wonder if one of Putin’s small tactical nuclear bomb dropped on Westminster might be for the best after all. It is unfixable.

By the looks of it we might well be heading for a hung parliament at the next election because none of the parties present themselves as something to enthusiastically embrace. Boris Johnson is a lame duck, maintaining power because neither to the Tories or Labour have anything better to offer. We’ve reached systemic political stagnation in a system that does not allow for new entrants. Since the main parties have a vested interest in maintaining that status quo, things can only decline further.

With politics in a dire state it would be tempting to resign from it entirely and abandon the country to its fate. UKIP won’t do that. We still have an influential online presence and we’ll be keeping the pilot light on for the future. We hope that one day there will be a mass realisation that the nation can no longer keep voting for the zombie establishment parties.

I take the view that it has to get worse before it gets better. Brits will do anything for an easy life and will tune out of politics just to stay sane – but where getting to a point where such disengagement is not consequence free. The consequences are no longer abstract. Hiding from the the reality of how badly we are governed now means hard choices between heating and eating. Residents of leafy Linton-on-Ouse will find it’s no longer safe to leave the house alone. Our streets increasingly lawless.

If there is any take home point from the local elections, it is that we are losing the national political consensus. In the past, when there tended to be a swing for or against one of the two main parties, it would be reflected more or less uniformly throughout the country. Now, there are significant regional differences just within England. Never mind the Union – England is breaking up.

The most notable disparity being between the large cities (London particularly, but also Birmingham) and the rest of the country. The very idea of national (much less UK) parties is becoming obsolete, with the vote fragmenting along ethnic and tribal lines. This not only has serious implications for the forthcoming general election but for the very nature of our governance. If there is no political consensus, consent to be governed by the (barely) majority party must be at risk.

It has long been the case that London is no longer and English city, and its culture is about as relevant to English life as any other global mega city. Our political system needs to change to reflect the reality that Britain has undergone a cultural balkanisation. There are city suburbs where the writ of British law does not run unless the police turn up in riot gear, and soon the armoured police land rovers, only routinely seen in Belfast, will be seen in every large city.

I’m known for my gloomy outlook and have been predicting doom and gloom for years. Things never quite turn out to be as bad as I expect. We weathered our botched exit from the single market reasonably well, and we bounced back from Covid lockdowns but each of these events has has legacy consequences which are snowballing by the day, and made immeasurably worse by Ukraine and Net Zero. I don’t know how much resilience is left in the economy but we’re already looking at a collapse in living standards and we’re only at the beginning of this downturn.

The reason I feel gloomier than usual is because there is no longer any hope. Brexit is dead and buried and the Tories aren’t going to do anything radical with it. The media and the Westminster establishment have reverted to business as usual, and change doesn’t seem likely.

There doesn’t seem to be any energy in the national debate and a sense of resignation and fatigue has set in. We’ve all been lied to once too often. The public still cares but our way of doing politics has lost its potency. If Brexit didn’t deliver change then what the hell will? If voting doesn’t work, what terror will take its place? It’s starting to feel like even a Labour government would be better than the Tories if only to accelerate us to the point where the public wakes up. All we can do in the meantime is chart the decline of a once great country.