“Clearly for us, this was not the result we might have hoped for,” says a senior Labour MP of the party’s grim showing in the Sleaford and North Hykeham byelection. “The challenge for us was because of Brexit. Everything was about Brexit. The messages about the A&E, the NHS, the messages about infrastructure, all of that got lost to an extent in the swirl around Brexit.”

Well, there it is: pesky old Brexit. If only Britain were not in the midst of its most highly charged political period for decades, if only leaving the EU had not captured the political imagination of a sizable part of Labour’s old core vote, if only many remain voters weren’t cottoning on to the much more primary-coloured message of the Lib Dems … well, then all would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

But, obviously, that’s not the case: deep changes in British politics are now coming to a head – and if a byelection amid huge political turbulence sees Labour drop from second to fourth place,and lose over 40% of its previous vote-share, the party should be very worried indeed.

Stark warning for Labour as party slips to fourth in Sleaford byelection Read more

Sleaford, let us not forget, comes only a week after Richmond Park, where Labour was so squeezed by the victorious Lib Dems that they got fewer votes than the number of people who are local party members.

Up in Lincolnshire, some people thought that because Labour had come second in 2015 (and indeed been a real contender back in 1997), some kind of anti-Tory coalition might coalesce around Jeremy Corbyn’s party. But no: as well as the inevitable win for the Conservatives, the night’s biggest story was the Lib Dems’ increase in support from 5.7% to 11% of the vote, and Labour’s corresponding collapse.

I went to Sleaford a couple of weeks ago, and followed the Labour candidate – a refuse collector and trade union activist – as he canvassed. He was giving it his all, but his pitch on Britain’s relationship with Europe – for which read the UK’s immediate future – felt flat.

As we knocked on doors in the village of Metheringham, he repeatedly collided with the view that Britain had to leave Europe as soon as possible, with no messing about. At the same time, it was pretty unclear how Labour might appeal to the 38% of local people who voted remain – many of whom, as far as I could tell, were very worried about what Brexit meant for their future.

Yes, Ukip’s support dropped a bit, and the party came second chiefly because of Labour’s fall. But in Sleaford, the Tories seemed to have the anti-EU vote mostly wrapped up: “Brexit means Brexit,” screamed their election literature, and that seemed to do its job.

What will happen in traditional Labour heartlands, where the party now led by Paul Nuttall is the dominant anti-EU force – or where, possibly, events are led by the “people’s movement”, which the Brexit-supporting tycoon Arron Banks will launch in the new year – should still be a massive worry for Labour.

And now, to add to those anxieties, the party has a new headache: if Richmond Park and Sleaford are anything to go by, there exists a swath of liberal, pro-EU voters to whom Labour does not speak, and who are willing to put aside any bad feelings about the Nick Clegg years and vote for the Lib Dems.

And here’s the really serious thing. This is not really about Brexit. The referendum and its aftermath have accelerated changes that were happening anyway: Labour’s long decline since the mid-1990s, the estrangement of its old working-class base, and the fact that it is increasingly a party rooted in big cities.

In England, outside such urban redoubts as inner London, Bristol, Leeds and Manchester, its foundations are cracking. Too many working-class voters perceive Labour as metropolitan, liberal and pro-EU, while many middle-class remainers evidently view Corbyn’s party as old-fashioned, shambolic, all over the place on Europe, and not worthy of their support. In other words, across much of the country, Labour is connecting with neither the 52% nor the 48%.

There is no clear way out of this impasse. The spectacle of senior Labour MPs whose politics were forged in the New Labour period suddenly trying to sound populist notes on immigration will convince nobody. At the same time, the avowedly liberal, globalist views of lots of Labour MPs are no help in the party’s old heartlands – and, thanks to the incoherence of the party leadership, such MPs are not connecting even with many of the voters who presumably share the same perspective.

As ever, Corbyn and his people are all at sea, and decent leadership would be a start. But the truth is that, echoing the precipitous decline of the centre-left across Europe, huge social, economic and political changes are leaving Labour behind. To complain that the party’s messages got lost in a “swirl” of other stuff is to totally misunderstand where we are. The swirl is politics. We had better get used to it.