JUST two days after voters in English regions cast their ballots in local elections, the Establishment and its hangers-on will attend — to the enrichment of Moss Bros — the coronation of Charles Windsor.

Turnout in English local elections usually averages out to around one third of those entitled to vote. In 2021 it reached the dizzy height of 35.1 per cent.

The Tories are due for a drubbing. In a feeble attempt at expectation management their chair, one Greg Hands (who he?), thinks that the party will lose in excess of 1,000 seats.

The reasons are easy to identify: soaring inflation that is eroding the value of wages that are already partly frozen from years of pay restraint, mortgage rates through the roof and rents that destroy every family budget.

Add to this the general sense that Tory governments — David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak — have exhausted the brand of any popular appeal it may have had beyond the stratum of property-owning and privileged voters who think the modern Conservative Party upholds what they conceive of as conservative verities.

Labour is confident — capitalising on its opinion poll lead of 42 per cent over the Tories’ 28 per cent — that victory is theirs.

But take a step back and consider the bigger picture. An absolute minority of voters, this time reduced even further by the Tories’ latest vote suppression measures, will elect councillors in a process which is designed to make the election a very poor reflection of actual opinion.

First-past-the-post electoral rules mean that where a variety of different interests take part in the contest, only the one with the highest vote is elected even if a majority of those voters chose someone else.

Far from being an effective barometer of electoral opinion, each contest simply records who is the least unpopular among the absolute minority of voters who are fussed enough to vote.

Add to that the reality that local councils are so denuded of power and finances that, for victors, the main effect of winning an election is to assume responsibility for administering the cuts imposed by the government.

Worse, the government “allowed” local councils to make up the deficit in central funding with council tax increases thus adding to the burden of blame councillors carry.

Central government grants were cut by 37 per cent in real terms between 2009-10 and 2019-20 — from £41 billion to £26bn at 2019-20 prices. Councils raised 25 per cent more council tax, in real terms, in 2019-20 compared to 2009-10.

Against the remorseless fact that Labour’s 20-point lead is eroding, we can be excused for thinking that Keir Starmer is engaged in a voter suppression strategy of his own.

By lowering expectations that Labour might challenge the banks and big business, the arms dealers and warmongers, the procurement parasites, water polluters and privatisers, he looks intent on abandoning both his council candidates and Labour voters to chance.

In most places, voting Labour remains the best option for securing some measure of representation for the working class that the Labour Party’s founders — trade unionists and revolutionary socialists — desired.

A vote for a Green or a communist has some utility, but the political reality is that our collective ability to erode the wealth and power of the ruling class is best found in the streets or on the picket lines that Starmer instructs us to abjure.

Two things would make Britain more resemble a democracy. Abolish the feudal hangovers that make the popular will subject to royal prerogative, monarch, lords, lords lieutenant and bishops for a starter and the single transferable vote so that, at every level, popular power is constituted in accordance with the wishes of the people.