Ignore the miserabilists: Andy Burnham as PM is a moment when things really can get better | Polly Toynbee

A s Keir Starmer bid a brief and emotional farewell at that pillory of a lectern, there was a moment for some to ask: what have we done, and why? He’s not a bad man, not a Boris Johnson or Liz Truss rogue prime minister. How decadent, if lack of charisma has become a sacking offence. But the reason why isn’t written in Westminster. It’s there in councils up and down the country where the hard-right Reform UK troopers swept through last month , from Barnsley to East Sussex. Look north, where Sunderland has 58 Reform councillors to Labour’s five. Look next door at South Tyneside, where Labour was nearly wiped out, left with only one councillor. Many Labour MPs now find themselves all but alone, their local parties hollowed out in an alien sea of Reform. Here’s why it matters beyond the green benches, beyond MPs’ personal careers, out in the very real world where services are (or aren’t) delivered locally. South Tyneside’s new Reform council is consulting on closing 10 publicly run nurseries , suggesting the private sector can provide the places instead for those hundreds of children. (The leader wouldn’t speak to me about the plan.) Stanley nurseries are what’s left of Sure Start, hubs based in council estates and the most deprived places, not only for daycare but baby clinics, parenting classes, dads’ groups, help and services of all kinds. Joanna Taylor, mother of a toddler in a Stanley nursery, is campaigning fiercely with petitions, marches and protests at the town hall. …