Top News

Nothing symbolises the public's frustration with local authorities like an elderly woman struggling to push her zimmerframe over an uneven manhole cover. Perhaps most striking about the lady struggling to move her walking aid in Hastings' main thoroughfare was the bleak acceptance, no fury, no batted eyelids from passersby, just the grim acceptance that that is how life is now.

In many ways, it typifies the general feeling of the people of Hastings and beyond toward politics in general. Despondence, antipathy and surrender to a Britain, which in the eyes of many, is in decline. Hastings is a seaside town that has moved away from the centre ground of British politics, in an election which could prove to be the death knell for the two-party system that has dominated British politics for over a century. But while much of the focus in the coming days will be on the surge of Reform UK, Hastings shows the other side of the UK's move to a multi-party system, after Zack Polanski's Greens took control of the local council with a majority after earning 10 seats.

In the days to come, Hastings, along with areas of London and elsewhere, will be heralded as proof of the UK's rejection of the established order in favour of Palestine, trans rights and a harsher tax system for the wealthy.

But grand ideas are of little use to a town where the elderly struggle to push their zimmerframes due to the dire state of the pavement, or where shops stand abandoned in what were once prime pieces of real estate.

Despite the local council being controlled by the Greens since 2024, issues of Palestine and wealth redistribution are barely brought up by those we speak to, and very few are able to recognise Polanski's picture when shown, despite claims from Green activists that it is his sheer force of personality that has single-handedly turned around their fortunes.

Instead, it is in the responses to pictures of Sir Keir Starmer where the move to the left in Hastings can be best understood.

"I couldn't possibly say what I want to," more than one person tells me. Others just shake their heads at the sight of him and go on their way.

One lady told me: "He has not done anything he said he was, going to. He has hit the elderly first, now people with disabilities he's a disgrace. He should be gone."

Another added: "I hear a lot of bad things about him, and people say that he is not fit for office."

Whether he is fit for office or not will come further down the line, as Labour MPs react to the mauling so many of them knew was coming.

But speaking to the people of Hastings, there is a growing feeling of anger that, once unleashed, is difficult to put back in the bottle.