It did not take the local election results to tell us how unpopular this chaotic government is; but they have certainly rammed the message home. I am wryly amused by reports that the main reason why the Tories are unpopular with certain voters (or leave voters) is that people are dissatisfied with the government for failing “to deliver Brexit”.

I am also amused by a report that Michael Gove, a Brexiter minister, believes a failure to deliver Brexit would be “a disaster”. Personally, I can think of few political developments that would be less disastrous. But there you are.

In the obsession with dissatisfaction with the approach of the main parties to Brexit, however, it is possible to underestimate the importance of the impact of austerity at the local level. In my view the Conservatives’ policy of austerity has finally caught up with them.

In my book Mr Osborne’s Economic Experiment (2015), I pointed out that the “age of austerity” experienced during the post-1945 Attlee government was unavoidable as a debilitated UK adapted from a wartime economy to peacetime. Resources were strictly limited, and production had to be channelled away from armaments towards the normal needs of the population. Spending power was restricted because goods and food were in short supply.

The austerity policy imposed by the Cameron-Osborne administration in 2010-15 – in coalition, let us not forget, with the Lib Dems – was a policy choice. George Osborne, in particular, seized the opportunity of the financial crisis of 2007-09 to cut back on public spending, or at least restrain its rate of growth.

The most obvious victims were local authorities and the electors they serve. Cuts varying between 30% and 40% were imposed on central government grants to local authorities, and the consequences were cumulative.

Hardly a day goes by without sad reports of the impact the cuts are having on public services, one of the most recent being the way teachers in overstretched state schools are having to dip into their own pockets to provide textbooks. There are countless other examples.

We were told by Theresa May and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, that austerity was coming to an end. But there is precious little sign of it. Which brings us back – I know you have been waiting for it – to the way that Brexit would compound the deleterious effects of austerity, a conclusion reached by every forecast I have examined.

Indeed, even leading Brexiters like Jacob Rees-Mogg and the economist Patrick Minford have admitted that the so-called “gains” from Brexit would be preceded by a period of attrition. As for the egregious Nigel Farage, it is all a great laugh for him, and he must privately marvel at how he gets away with it – at the European taxpayers’ expense.

However, the nation has had enough of austerity. A sensible Labour party would have a golden opportunity to restore a fractured economy and social fabric if its leader, and his absurdly over-influential lieutenant Seumas Milne, were not so obsessed with their hostility towards the European Union and their misguided desire for a so-called “Labour Brexit”.

The point is that all forms of Brexit – hard, soft, rare to medium – are worse than the deal we have now. Just imagine that the Corbyn Brexiters won an election and either inherited Brexit or opted for it. I fear that they would spend most of their time trying to defend the pound in a way that would make the Labour government’s problems of the 1970s look like a vicarage tea party.

The Labour party is full of good people who want to fight inequality and introduce sensible social democratic – and, yes, green – policies. They know that Brexit in any form would be a dangerous distraction from this historic mission and aggravate the ills they seek to cure.

Jeremy Corbyn built up an impressive band of followers on the promise that he would listen to them. Unfortunately he spends too much time listening to the likes of Milne who, like him, sees the EU as some kind of capitalist plot instead of the most successful effort in history to maintain peace and prosperity in Europe.

Among the many ironies is that Jon Lansman, the founder of the Momentum movement that provides Corbyn and Milne with their base, is himself a remainer.

Finally, my quote of the week is from one of the many people I address in my travels to test the Brexit mood. “I voted leave, and I know we were lied to. I shall vote leave again because I believe in democracy.”

As my Greek master, who taught me a thing or two about the origins of democracy, used to say: “God Help Us.”