As the dust settles on last week’s local elections, and Keir Starmer’s future hangs in the balance, what are the main takeaways from all the present political turmoil? What voters have announced – in the most unambiguous terms since Brexit – is that they’re done with the idea we have to prioritise other people and other things over what is in the interests of ordinary working British people. The public will no longer allow this discredited, globalist notion of treating national self-interest as a second-order priority to be foisted upon them. It has become the guiding maxim of much of the political and bureaucratic class.

The country’s former top civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, once said, in the context of immigration policy and the economy: “I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare.” Putting two fingers up at taxpayers like this was always outrageous. And it has now clearly failed. The public simply won’t stomach it any longer. Commentators have sought various ways to describe what has happened in British politics over recent years, first demonstrated by the Brexit vote. Some have called it populism. Others have described it as a backlash against the elites, though I’m not sure that’s quite right when most people see business and tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk or James Dyson as deserving of respect.

During the Brexit campaign, Michael Gove claimed “people in this country have had enough of experts”. There’s something to that but straightforward hostility to experts cannot quite be the right way to understand our current moment when people are now realising that many of the people in charge of Whitehall ministries have only the slimmest of knowledge and expertise in areas over which they exert power.

Theresa May distinguished between “citizens of nowhere” and “citizens of somewhere”. Everything we have seen now over 22 months of misrule by Starmer stems from the preference he stated in 2023 for Davos over Westminster. People want a politics grounded in home, not a Prime Minister in it for a family photo with world leaders.

They don’t want an elite class, claiming an expertise they often don’t possess, and a moral high ground they don’t deserve, trying to tell us little people how things should be done. Often with reference to international law or human rights, these people have tried to dictate in the most sanctimonious of tones that this is simply the way things must be. Rather than level with the public, and point out the range of options on any given issue and the trade-offs involved, they have sought to present a fait accompli.

An asylum policy that would require us to withdraw from certain international treaties or repeal certain domestic legislation is not even offered, such is the fear in the governing class that the public, if given a choice, might make the wrong one. But the public have realised we do not need to put economic immigrants posing as asylum seekers over women’s safety.

We do not need to prostrate ourselves at the feet of shouty activists, whether Greta Thunberg or pro-Gaza mobs. We do not need to nod solemnly when the perpetually offended take exception to something in our Christian culture. We do not need to indulge outrageous demands for reparations from foreign countries. Nor fold in the face of international courts advising us to give away our own sovereign territory.

Nor must we prize other concerns over our own interests – whether unquestioning adherence to an outdated framework of international law, or an amorphous notion of our ‘international reputation’ as judged by the mood on a Friday night in the UN Delegates Lounge.

Put simply, we can put Britain first without any embarrassment about doing so. Indeed, only by doing so can this country survive and succeed and be able to continue to make a positive economic, cultural, and intellectual contribution to the world – as we always have done.

Call it populism, call it anything else you like. The real takeaway from the local elections and our PM’s unprecedented unpopularity is that Britons want their own country to be put first. It’s extraordinary that even after the electoral thumping of last week, so many politicians still haven’t woken up to that simple truth.

Ameer Kotecha is CEO of the Centre for Government Reform. He was formerly a senior diplomat, serving as the head of the British consulate in Russia 2023-25