FED up with your local councillor failing to fix the potholes? Thinking about voting them out tomorrow?
Never in modern times has the political fate of a national leader hinged so heavily on a set of elections that are supposed to be about bin collections and leisure centres.
Whether he likes it or not, Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership is on the ballot paper as voters seek to give him a bloody nose for a tumultuous two years in No10.
And unless Britain’s pollsters have all been reading their numbers upside-down, Labour is on course for a nationwide battering on a scale not seen for decades.
Nigel Farage is thundering towards victory, while Zack Polanski is also proving a thorn in the government’s side.
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For plotters looking to dethrone the PM, the defeat could give them all the ammunition they need to strike…
The headline story of Thursday night will be the collapse of the Labour vote in all areas of the country.
An eve-of-election analysis forecast Starmer to lose a staggering 1,400 councillors, which is almost 70 per cent of all the seats he is defending.
In an era of five-party politics, he is being squeezed from all angles and in all places.
Gone are the days when Labour could rely on their working class heartlands holding up no matter how bad things got.
Take Sunderland, for example, where the City Council has been led by Labour since its formation in the 1970s.
According to the pollsters More In Common, if a general election were held tomorrow Reform would unseat Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson by a big margin.
How much Nigel Farage’s candidates eat into the Labour vote in the North East city will be worth watching.
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A bit further south, Labour also risks surrendering control of the Yorkshire battleground of Calderdale council via a pincer movement from Reform and the Greens.
With Farage mopping up its Leave-voting areas, and Zack Polanski showing well among Muslim communities, Starmer’s voters are being peeled off from both fronts.
Birmingham, which Labour has held since 2012, looks set to fall into no overall control amid cannibalisation from Reform, Gaza independents and the Greens.
And even the party’s once stronghold of London, the party is under siege from Reform in the outer ring and Greens in the urban boroughs.
But nowhere will be quite as painful for Labour than Wales, where the party looks set to crash into THIRD place having held power in Cardiff for more than a century.
After decades of drift, Labour’s own First Minister Eluned Morgan is on course to be punished by losing her own seat.
Plaid Cymru and Reform are locked in a two-horse race, although neither are on track to form a majority in the Senedd.
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Scotland too will be a sore spot for Labour, who a few years ago were on course to turf out the SNP after two decades only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
There is no love for the Nats after years of scandal (or their crusade for independence) but that apathy appears overpowered by hatred of the Labour government at Westminster.
It is why earlier this year Labour’s Scottish leader Anas Sarwar demanded the PM resign. He knows the Starmer brand is toxic north of the border.
So pity the poor junior ministers sent into TV studios Friday morning with the unenviable task of putting a positive gloss on their thrashing.
They will be walking into the gunfire unarmed, with little to cling to in the way of excuses.
Expect to hear lots of talk about how “governing parties always do badly in midterm”, and how Labour was bound to do worse in seats last fought four years ago when it vanquished a Partygate-mired Tory party.
And what of the Conservatives this time around? Kemi Badenoch’s “bounce” in Westminster will not save her recovering party from also suffering heavy losses.
Reform is expected to make deep inroads into Badenoch’s own Essex backyard, while the Lib Dems will keep nibbling away at the “Blue Wall” of the south.
(But bumbling Sir Ed Davey is still under pressure from his restless MPs for failing to capitalise on Labour’s unpopularity).
Yet after shoring up her backbenchers, Badenoch is safe from a leadership challenge.
The same cannot be said of Starmer, who has whittled through his political lives at a rate of knots since entering No10 in July 2024.
The sharks have been circling for some time. They almost went in for the kill over the Mandelson scandal, which will rear its head once again when the files are published.
What will those mutineers do when they emerge blinking into the sunlight on Friday morning to the devastating defeat?
Vanquished councillors – tired from a long night – will likely waste no time blaming Starmer for their losses.
Could it trigger a drip-drip of Labour MPs to break ranks and call for the PM to go?
Here in Westminster such talk of treachery is already well underway.
What is keeping Starmer in place is the lack of an obvious successor ready to wield the knife.
Lifestyle & Culture Editor
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