The local government results outside London have left the Tories triumphant. At the time of writing they seem to have won around 44% of the vote against Labour’s 24% and the Lib Dems’ 25%.

The Tory vote is contradictory. David Cameron has gone some way to disassociating the party from Thatcherite politics in the public perception. He had to. That space is largely camped on by Labour now. In recent weeks has criticised Labour’s proposals to lock people up for 42 days and the plan to make the poor pay more tax. He even managed to implant an image of himself as a Radiohead-loving cyclist so broadening his appeal to some of this site’s key demographics. He was “kicking at an open goal” when it came to the economy. That’s a sporting metaphor. People now routinely come back from the supermarket commenting on how much more expensive food is. It’s impossible for hundreds of thousands of people to find somewhere secure and affordable to live and, reasonably enough, they think that a government elected in 1997 might have something to do with that.

Labour’s rank and file structures have melted away in large parts of the country. They had one person at my polling station in what should be one of their heartland areas and he saw his job as warning people that they would have three ballot papers rather than suggesting that they vote Labour. Was this advice from the party, a personal quirk or a fair assessment of the response he would get? That is an open question.

What is clear is that a lot of former Labour supporters find it increasingly hard to find a reason to vote for the party. For some the war was the last straw. For others it will be their housing situation, their pension or their below inflation pay settlement.

Looking at the council election results you’ll notice a category that says “others”. At they time of writing they had 360 council seats. God knows how they all are or on what platform they stood. Combine them with Respect, the Greens and the Socialist Party’s Dave Nellist, all elected as councillors, it indicates that there is an electorally significant group of people willing to break from the traditional parties. The BNP vote indicates how the most demoralised members of the working class can swing.

My initial judgement is that these results confirm that the ongoing erosion of working class support is continuing. For much of its core electorate the motivation for supporting the party weakens with every new neo-liberal initiative. From this comes the possibility and the necessity of creating the pluralistic, anti-imperialist, class struggle organisation to fill that political vacuum. Look at Italy if you want to see what happens if you don’t.