However you attempt to spin it, the local election results are not looking good for Labour. The most dramatic swing has little to do with the left – Ukip’s vote has collapsed since 2013, to the benefit of the Tories – but that has still spelled disaster in many marginal seats. Local results don’t perfectly predict how people will vote in a general election, but it’s hard to feel optimistic. Looking at national polls, there’s little reason to believe Ukip’s wipeout, and the Tories’ consequent gains, won’t be repeated at a national level. Several Labour MPs are defending 2015 majorities smaller than the Ukip vote in their constituency.

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Theresa May has deliberately courted Ukip supporters, to the point where she has seemed at risk of alienating more liberal Conservative voters. Labour, in contrast, has desperately tried to find a line on Brexit that appeals to leave and remain voters alike. The party’s messaging has often seemed confused, and even people paying close attention would struggle to sum up its stance in a sentence. The Liberal Democrats saw an opportunity to steal votes from both left and right, and have campaigned vigorously as the most unambiguously pro-EU party.

If local election results are taken as at all indicative, the consequences of this strategy have been underwhelming. Although early results suggest the Liberal Democrat vote share has increased by a couple of percentage points, they have failed to make a dent in the Tory vote. Though liberally minded Conservatives might favour a softer Brexit, it’s clear that most of them have other, overriding priorities. The much vaunted “Lib Dem fightback” has mainly served to slightly weaken an already weak left. Next month’s election is a straight two-way contest, and even that’s not currently particularly close.

It would be easy to give up hope altogether, but one thing is keeping me going: maybe, just maybe, these local election results will be the wakeup call the broad left needs. Whatever your feelings about Jeremy Corbyn, it’s clear that we only have two options: either Theresa May continues as prime minister – and continues to implement counterproductive spending cuts while risking economic disaster with her delusional, blustering approach to Brexit negotiations – or Labour takes over.

In the latter scenario, we’d have the sensible, careful Keir Starmer managing Brexit while the government implemented a whole series of policies that actually benefited ordinary people: infrastructure investment; a humane welfare system and adequate funding for schools, social care and the NHS; a crackdown on slum landlords; better regulation of rental properties; a million new homes built over the next five years; tax cuts for small businesses that enable them to compete against unfairly advantaged offshore firms; renationalisation of our railways, so UK commuters aren’t forced to fork out five times the amount paid for equivalent journeys in mainland Europe.

Play Video 0:44 Tim Farron confronted by angry Brexit voter – video

The odds are against us, but there are plenty of votes that can be won between now and 8 June. One of the biggest challenges is turnout. Younger people and members of lower-income groups are more inclined to vote Labour but less likely to actually make it to the polls. Even if nobody switched party, the general election result would look very different to what’s predicted if millennials could be persuaded to vote at the same rate as pensioners, as polls factor in turnout differences and oversample the elderly accordingly.

There are also swing voters to be gained if Labour can effectively get its message across. May’s promise of “strong and stable” leadership is farcical when you consider her actual record, yet it’s almost the entirety of her offer. Informed, enthusiastic local campaigners have the opportunity to cut through the empty soundbites and media guff and explain, in concrete terms, how a Labour government would improve most people’s lives.

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It would be an enormous shame if the local results deterred previously eager Labour members from going door-knocking this weekend. If anything, it should have clarified the situation for left-leaning individuals who were sitting on the fence. If you want to avoid Conservative hegemony, it’s time to rally behind whoever can best beat them in your area. In most seats, that’s Labour.

How will you feel in a few years’ time if the Conservatives are still in power – vandalising the welfare state and tearing up employment, environmental and human rights legislation after driving us over the hard Brexit cliff – and you didn’t do everything you could to stop it?