There can be no doubt. What has manifested itself most clearly in last week’s local and mayoral elections is that people are acutely feeling the weight of the past decade and a half. The contrast between the hopes and expectations of the electorate versus the abject, repeated inability of the governing party to deliver against them couldn’t be starker. As far as the current government is concerned, that connection has been firmly made in hearts and minds and there is no going back.

The dismantling of public services through austerity, the unmaterialised promises of Brexit, the erosion of trust through the handling of the pandemic, and the failed economic experiment that has made working people worse off. The status quo has failed to deliver, and this reaches across every part of people’s day-to-day lives. The disastrous showing for the Conservatives – one of their worst local election results in 40 years – is the inevitable exhausted response.

But to simply look at these elections as a precursor to the main event of a general election at some indetermined point later in the year is to do them a major disservice. That the West Midlands incumbent, Conservative mayor Andy Street, came within 0.3% of a Labour upset in a race so tight it required multiple recounts, shows that the power of meaningful regional representation in the form of metro mayors is starting to cut through. Similarly, Teesside’s Ben Houchen bucked the national anti-Conservative trend by winning a third mayoral term with 53.6% of the vote against Labour’s 41.3% speaks to the strength of his personal brand in the region. As expected, both places saw significant swings to Labour, but the purposeful distancing of Individual vs. Party in both campaigns – with both effectively fighting on their incumbency record as independents – cut through enough to have real impact in terms of mobilising voters.

In the case of local councils, the strong showing for candidates outside of the grip of the two main parties transcending traditional loyalties, with Greens, Lib Dems, and independent candidates all making major gains, can only be a good thing for local democratic dynamism and engagement, and in guarding against complacency. And while taking just two council seats nationally, the numbers for Reform were high enough for them to cause further upset to the Conservatives as a challenger from the right. Regardless of the direction in which it is being expressed, people see that local government is in crisis through the cuts to life and limb services on their doorsteps and are expressing a clear mandate for change.

What can be gleaned from these events about a future Labour government and its relationship with place leadership? As of these elections, 11 out of England’s 12 metro mayors now represent the Party. Although the creation of new county combined authorities in the coming year will likely see some Conservative mayoralties, the balance will continue to be firmly tipped towards Labour figures in this context, the growing profile and visibility of mayors as strong figureheads for their regions and meaningful power sources – something new to a Labour government – presents both opportunities and challenges. It will need to continue to nurture a shared sense of purpose around its five key ‘Missions’ and in combined authority mayors as key partners in their implementation. It will need to support collaboration and alliances across the mayoralties through shared learning across different geographies and levels of organisational maturity (much of which is happening through our own Inclusive Growth Network). It will also need to balance, and indeed welcome, autonomous perspectives that do not always slot neatly into national Party lines and are informed by accountability to citizens.

Finally, ten years after the signing of the first devolution deal, much has been made about the need for formalised, structured ways for mayors to engage with the centre and feed into national policymaking processes with a clearer embedded voice. This will be vital for the more mature partnership with places the Labour leadership is hoping for. Whitehall arguably has just as much to gain from such an arrangement as our regions, with much to be learnt from how Labour is already delivering and innovating in power on the ground – something which the centre has limited bandwidth to engage with under current arrangements. Whether this takes the form of Gordon Brown’s suggested Assembly of Nations and Regions in place of the current House of Lords, or whether a separate forum of subnational leaders and government ministers, establishing a formal framework will be key. The change people so desperately want to see won’t be quick or easy, but a collaboration between a bold Labour government and empowered regions will be a vital next step.