Last Friday morning, my head spun. Having voted in two local elections – for our town and district councils – and then spent the first few hours of the next day following the results, my partner and I got our polling cards for yet another contest. This caused a brief fit of amusement about Brexit Britain’s weird addiction to sending us to polling stations, before we realised we had effectively received our tickets for an awful reality TV show.

Thanks chiefly to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party and the pithily named Change UK – the Independent Group – many of the contestants in the looming European elections form a rum old crowd. From a former BBC newsreader, through superannuated Tories and newspaper columnists, on to the former editor of the lads’ magazine Loaded, with the independent candidate who calls himself Tommy Robinson as the rubbish punchline. God knows what the poor souls who have diligently served as MEPs must feel about this sudden gatecrashing of their world: here is yet another woeful instalment of the Brexit drama, now replayed by celebrity leave and remain campaigners as a pantomime of futile gestures.

If councils are to attract and retain new people, they need not warm words, but meaningful power

The local elections in England (and Northern Ireland), by contrast, were mundane but altogether more worthwhile. Politics now moves so quickly that basing credible predictions for national politics on local contests is something of a mug’s game: think back to 2017, when Labour got thumped in council contests, only to pull off that minor miracle at the general election. But in the huge losses suffered by the Tories, widespread Labour failure, surges for the Lib Dems and Greens, and a huge increase in support for independents – not to mention the fact that many places had mountains of spoilt ballot papers – there was a clear enough picture: of a seething, quicksilver politics that mutates at speed, with everything now infused with the cultural and political tensions brought to a head by Brexit.

As the resulting noise dies down, the lucky winners will be faced once again with the basic fact of modern local government. The austerity imposed on councils for about a decade is grinding on, and the room for effective politics remains far too small. And woven into this grimness is another big problem. In 2004, 96.5% of local councillors in England were white; according to recent figures, published just before last week’s elections, the figure was 95.8%. The same stats suggested that over a quarter of councillors were aged over 70, up from 14% 15 years ago, and half were over 60. Two-thirds were men.

Last week, the Guardian told the stories of a handful of councillors who were about to stand down. They were “mainly people in their 30s who have risen to run councils with budgets of £100m or more”. They spoke of laughably meagre pay and serious stress – now made worse by a clear shift in public attitudes towards even local politicians. The outgoing Tory leader of Pendle council in east Lancashire, who has been paid a princely £6,500 a year, pinned the blame on Brexit: “We were given a yes-or-no decision, and everything now is right or wrong. There’s nothing in the middle now … I think that’s what’s made the whole atmosphere of politics horrific, actually.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The biggest recent news about childhood obesity came not from the Department of Health, but a programme created in Leeds.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Having read his story, I had a long conversation with one of the people who represents my own community: Martin Dimery, a 62-year-old former drama teacher who is one of two Green party representatives on Somerset county council, having heroically beaten the Tories in 2017 by a margin of four votes. He told me about his key role in such small victories as the council’s decision to move away from single-use plastic, as well as hard work on pushing the ruling Conservatives to stop proposed cuts to education for disabled children. When I mentioned hostility from the public, he emitted a mirthless laugh: “I’ve had people slamming the door on me recently. They say: ‘You’ve betrayed the country because of Brexit.’ You’re just another person standing there with a rosette, and they tell you they don’t trust you.”

At the heart of the crisis in local politics is a deep contradiction. For 15 years at least, Westminster politicians have habitually talked up somehow reviving local government. But power has continued to be snatched from people on the ground. (Consider, for example, the story of how elected local politicians have been shoved out of any control or oversight of state education.) Meanwhile austerity has ensured that helpless local politicians are answerable for nonsensical policies authored by Westminster, just as our exit from the EU and the noise made by moronic opportunists has poisoned debate at every level.

Yet here is the fascinating thing. Despite cuts, crises and the sense that far too many councils are locked into decline, there is some cause for hope. The realisation that central government is too remote to solve a whole host of problems, and most things are best dealt with at the most local level, feels like it has become unanswerable: something highlighted not just by failures at the top (picture the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, and the point will instantly become clear), but by a host of trailblazing examples of how to do things differently.

The biggest recent news about childhood obesity came not from the Department of Health, but a programme created in Leeds. The new Labour party is setting great store by the so-called Preston model, whereby that city’s council is boosting the local economy by using its financial clout to help local business. If you want to know about the cutting edge of regeneration, it is best to talk to people who have either created local success stories or are trying to, in Manchester, Plymouth or Doncaster.

This continuing revolution, moreover, is not restricted to big places. Where I live, in the 25,000-population town of Frome, the coalition of independents in charge of the town council – who last week won all 17 of its seats, a feat they pulled off for the second time – have spent eight years encouraging sustainable transport, assisting local charities and helping to ease the realities of poverty and inequality. Among their achievements is the town’s “community fridge”, which encourages people to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away – and is now saving 90,000 items annually as well as enabling emissions savings equivalent to taking 43 cars off the road. This was not an idea authored in a central ministry: it is a classic example of an initiative that has proved successful and which now deserves to be adopted elsewhere: an opportunity for local politics to influence what happens nationally, rather than the other way round.

Across Europe and beyond, this kind of thinking is known as the new municipalism, and its lessons are obvious. If you want representatives who reflect the places they serve, we will have to pay them more. If councils are to attract and retain new people, they need not warm words but meaningful power. Many town, city and county halls are due a huge change in culture. Above all, if we are eventually going to push beyond the anger, silliness and polarisation of Brexit politics, it is obvious where we will have to start: not among grandstanding celebs and the white noise of social media, but in close proximity to the problems we need to solve, in the places where millions of us actually live.

• John Harris is a Guardian columnist