As Westminster rages, and Labour sinks into civil war: what about the people?

“Westminster is a cocoon. Lots of people in lovely jobs, so it becomes easy to forget the world outside.” Catherine West should know. She’s been an MP for 11 years, even if you hadn’t heard of her until this weekend when the Labour backbencher threatened Keir Starmer for the leadership, firing the first shots in the civil war that now engulfs the government. Before Wes Streeting broke cover, before Andy Burnham boarded that train to Euston, there was Catherine West.

Ever since, she has been pelted with insults. But, when we spoke this weekend, she was not only self-aware, it was one of the few times this week that I’ve heard a Labour politician grasp that what’s at stake goes beyond who sits where at the cabinet table, or how their party is polling: it’s about who leads the UK into the 2030s.

Last week’s elections underlined one thing: Starmer is on course to lose badly to Nigel Farage and his politics of ethnic division. All Downing Street’s flag-waving and poison-dripping about immigrants has failed. The outcome that most horrifies Labour MPs – not just losing power, but handing it to Reform – looms ever larger.

Yet there was not even a smoke ring of a plan to meaningfully change course, just the same old names playing their long and complicated chess games: waiting for scandals to fade from memory, waiting for the king’s speech followed by the five days of debate, waiting for the parliamentary recess to start next week.

“We could all fall asleep,” says West, “then wake up in three years to see the electoral map turn light blue.” So she slammed her fist down on the table and sent the chess pieces flying.

Westminster is a cocoon. It is the phrase that sums up this period: our politicians protected by a casing from the harsh world outside. Only a cocoon could explain the behaviour of Labour MPs this week, lining up behind Streeting or Burnham with no explanation of how either man would better run a country that is fast heading into its third economic crisis in six years.

After Covid, and the inflationary shock of Russia invading Ukraine, the US and Israeli war on Iran is again pushing up prices on everything from diesel to fruit and veg. By this autumn, analysts forecast that the average food bill will be 50% higher than it was when the last cost of living crisis began. How any would-be prime minister plans to deal with that ought to be the number one consideration. The standard chatter about poll ratings or better communications simply reveals how Westminster’s politicians and media keep looking inwards rather than out to the public.

Only a cocoon could explain the surprise felt by Labour MPs at hearing the visceral dislike of voters while doorknocking these past few weeks – reporters have been hearing it for months. Only a cocoon could have shielded SW1 from the collapse of the two-party system, which is one of the central political facts of our time. After decaying for decades, the political mainstream is now about to give out.

Last week only one out of three voters voted for either of the two main parties. Two out of three Britons schlepped to their polling station to make what would once have been called a protest vote. And there is a lot to protest about: a baby born today can expect to live less of its life in good health than a decade ago. Living standards have barely budged since the banking crash. Young people find it almost impossible to get on the housing ladder and start their lives.

The failure of either Labour or the Tories to tackle these issues is why Reform and the Greens are doing so well. Rather than some juggernaut of history inevitably bearing down on No 10, Farage’s electoral strength is the flipside of the political mainstream’s weakness, and if he wins in 2029, it will be because the mainstream are losers.

Take it from someone who has been warning about Farage from the moment he stepped back into Westminster: he is beatable. Indeed, he has just been beaten. Last week, Reform campaigned hard in one of the most Brexit parts of the UK, Wales – and it lost to Plaid Cymru, which is not a party sponsored by crypto-billionaires. In England, Reform scored almost the same vote share as Labour did in in the 1983 general election under Michael Foot. For those younger readers who have never heard of Michael Foot, there’s a reason: he lost.

If today’s Labour MPs are serious about beating Farage, they need to come up with answers to those existential questions facing their voters. As it is, the party this week has tipped into an internal war, rather brilliantly christened by one wit on the internet as the Burn-sheviks versus the Wes-sheviks (one awaits the coming of the Ed-sheviks). Having broken out, that war is unlikely to stop.

Not when the home secretary, the foreign secretary and the energy secretary are all calling on their boss to bring in the removal vans. Not when almost one in four Labour MPs have demanded their prime minister quit. Once said, these things can’t be unsaid, and simply pretending they haven’t been voiced is untenable.

For the rest of us, our hope must be that rather than starting up the tunes for Westminster’s next round of musical chairs, the contenders turn and face the country and tell us what they would do better. As Labour Growth Group pointed out this week, 72% of the electorate say the cost of living crisis is structural, not a temporary squeeze. This is “a country well ahead of its political class”, says its report. Quite right. Yet the usual solution of more market and more delivery won’t cut it – because it hasn’t cut it for the past two years.

Anyone who wants to replace Starmer has to start by accepting that he has done good things – just not enough and not at scale. The king’s speech this week is a good example. There is a social housing bill, which stops the sale of newly built council houses. After 35 years, this makes council housebuilding viable again. But there is not the money to build more council homes. There is the nationalisation of British Steel in Scunthorpe, which is part of the prime minister’s big reset. Good – but as trade unions argue, why did he let Port Talbot collapse?

The UK is in the grip of deep and justified pessimism: that tomorrow will be worse than today, that our children will not enjoy the same standards of living that we have done. That is what any Labour leadership contest must address. Only politicians in a cocoon could think otherwise.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist