Sunderland was one of the first constituencies to declare its result on the night of the Brexit referendum and the margin of victory for leave sent shockwaves through the political establishment and the financial markets. Since then, Sunderland has become a symbol of Brexit Britain, stereotyped as a “left behind” former mining community marked by anti-immigration, anti-European sentiment.

To pin local election reverses purely on Brexit is both lazy and ridiculous Read more

But as the Sunderland MP Bridget Phillipson writes online for the Observer today, something interesting happened there in Thursday’s local elections. Labour haemorrhaged votes, but they didn’t all go to Ukip; there was a significant swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats, who picked up two more seats, and to the Greens, who won their first-ever council seat in the city.

A similarly complex picture has emerged across the country, which underlines why both main parties are wrong to interpret the results as a cry of frustration at their failure to implement Brexit. Voters chose to punish them both: the Tories suffered their worst local election performance in two decades, losing around 1,300 council seats. Labour proved unable to take advantage of the government’s dire ratings: it also saw a significant drop in its projected vote share and a net loss in council seats, ceding control of councils in Labour strongholds such as Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Bolsover. But the unalloyed winners were the smaller, pro-remain parties, whose achievements were nothing short of stunning. The Lib Dems had net gains of almost 700 council seats, the Greens almost 200.

The country remains divided, voters united only in their apparent unhappiness with both main parties

It seems extraordinary that both main parties appear to have extracted a “just get on with Brexit” message from these results. It would be preposterous to write off Lib Dem and Green success as a protest vote against the two main parties, given their unambiguous support for a confirmatory referendum. The number of spoilt ballots suggests real frustration among some leave voters. But the gains made by pro-remain parties show that remain voters are as likely to punish the main parties for their Brexit positions. The country remains divided, voters united only in their apparent unhappiness with both main parties.

And who could blame them? The Tories thoroughly deserved their drubbing. This has been a desperately dysfunctional government, the prime minister’s authority shot to pieces, cabinet ministers more interested in their own leadership bids than running the country. May has proved a dreadful prime minister, running her Brexit negotiations as a hostage to the hard Eurosceptic flank of her party, rather than seeking to build compromise in the wake of a vote that split the nation 52-48. She has inflicted years of public service cuts that have imposed terrible burdens on families: child poverty predicted to soar to record levels; schools forced to close on Friday afternoons; 1.4 million older people going without the basic support they need with everyday tasks.

All this should have set the stage for substantial gains by the opposition. Labour’s losses – it did badly in leave- and remain-supporting seats alike – were at least in part a rejection of its disingenuous Brexit policy. Last week, we called for Jeremy Corbyn to come clean about where Labour stands on Brexit. But the party has continued to do all it can to avoid levelling with the public. It continues to say its preferred outcome is an impossible-to-achieve Brexit deal that maintains the benefits of EU membership and protects jobs and a general election that it simply does not have the parliamentary votes to trigger.

Both parties appear to view these results as further impetus to strike some sort of compromise deal to deliver Brexit. The appeal for May is obvious: she is desperate to deliver Brexit before leaving No 10 and a bargain with Labour looks perhaps the only potential route to doing so. If she strikes a deal with Corbyn, but Labour MPs don’t back it in sufficient numbers, it at least allows the Tories to try to lay the blame for blocking Brexit with Labour.

All the evidence suggests that Labour would be penalised for enabling Brexit

But striking a deal with May is an incomprehensibly bad strategy for Labour. Any guarantees that she offers will not be binding on her successor, who is likely to come from her party’s Eurosceptic wing. Our future relationship with the EU will be thrashed out only once we have left. There is nothing to stop a future Conservative prime minister building a different parliamentary coalition, for a much harder Brexit, once the withdrawal agreement has been passed and May has stepped down.

All the evidence suggests that Labour would be penalised for enabling Brexit. Three-quarters of Labour voters think Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU. As the academic Rob Ford has highlighted, in most leave-supporting Labour seats, the majority of Labour voters will still be remainers. Thursday’s elections saw swings from Labour to the Lib Dems and Greens even in leave-supporting areas such as Sunderland.

But the volume of the message pro-referendum voters will get to send to Labour in the European elections later this month will depend on the extent to which the smaller parties work together. The Lib Dems say their overtures to the new Change UK grouping of MPs have been rejected. This is immensely disappointing. Change UK cannot claim to be challenging the old, broken politics while continuing to embrace its worst aspects, running candidates in every region because it arrogantly regards itself as the only channel through which voters can express their dissatisfaction with the main parties.

Labour must urgently switch tack and back a confirmatory referendum before the European elections: it is both the right thing to do and the only sensible electoral strategy for the party. If it fails to do so, it deserves to be roundly punished by voters. But their ability to deliver a strong message will depend on the smaller parties working together to avoid fragmenting the pro-referendum vote.