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As the sun came up on Friday, there was no question Britain was waking to a new dawn. And, hackneyed metaphors aside, it's a distinctly turquoise-coloured sunrise.

Over the last few days, we have been told Britain is now a nation of five-party politics - but it felt more like one-party politics overnight as Nigel Farage's Reform UK party battered all comers in Thursday's local elections. As I write, Reform has won 348 seats, Labour has lost 248, and the Conservatives are down 135.

We knew it was going to be a bloodbath, but the numbers are still remarkable. And they are impossible to ignore. They are a roar across the nation, saying "give us a general election".

Labour's Northern heartlands, the famous Red Wall, became the Turquoise Wall as ward after Labour ward fell to Farage's party.

First, Labour lost control in Tameside, Angela Rayner's backyard, then in Wigan, Lisa Nandy's fiefdom, then Hartlepool, Lord Mandelson's old constituency. The Labour strongholds were crumbling minute by minute as Reform swept all before them.

This was not some half-hearted protest vote. It was a nation telling the sitting Government to get the hell out. A nation sick of seeing their country being run down, of working harder while feeling poorer, of watching unfairness prosper and the skivers rewarded, and of Britain's place in the world reduced further every day this witless self-harming Government is in power.

It is unequivocally a nation demanding a general election.

They don't want a change of leader - they want a wholesale change of Government.

They want a government that addresses their concerns, their hopes and their fears, not a government that simply virtue-signals to its own kind and serves the big unions.

They want a government that might address the cost of living, crime, immigration, and even, god forbid, the defence of the realm.

Labour is no longer the voice of working Britain. It is the voice of non-working Britain.

And because of this, as Farage adviser James Orr pointed out: "Working Britain has found its home in Reform UK. We are witnessing an electoral earthquake."

It is impossible to disagree.

Hilariously, like Monty Python's knight who has had all his limbs hacked off yet claims "it's only a scratch!", a deluded Labour peer Baroness Hazarika said following the bloodbath: "I think it would be a mistake to make immigration a priority."

No, what the people really want is a prime minister visiting Armenia to cosy up to Ursula von der Leyen ... a woman we voted to be rid of in the biggest democratic ballot this country has ever seen. Talk about optics.

As the blizzard of Reform victories mounted, Reform's Nadhim Zahawi said: "Keir Starmer has to look in the mirror today and ask 'what has the country said to me?' and the country has said we need a general election."

And he's right. We desperately need to replace this failed Government before we become a failed state taking our begging bowl to the IMF.

Unfortunately, Zahawi pointed out that to go to the country would be the "honourable thing to do" - which is why, despite the clear and present danger this Government presents, I suspect Starmer will cling to power like a man clinging to a window ledge by his fingertips.

Also spare a thought for poor Kemi Badenoch, whose Tory party also came in for a mauling and has clearly not spent enough time on the naughty step.

This is tough on Badenoch, who has proved an estimable leader and a convincing politician. Unfortunately, she will always have that one thing holding her back. And that one thing, of course, is the rest of the Conservative Party.