The Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty visits Luton to speak with former Vauxhall Motors workers made redundant after their plant closed in March last year, arguing that the collapse of trusted institutions – not stupidity or bigotry – is pushing former Labour voters towards Nigel Farage's Reform UK. He contends that the decline of industrial towns like Luton, alongside similar closures at Grangemouth and Port Talbot, and the rise of the far right in eastern Germany, reflects a broader pattern in which communities abandoned by employers and unsupported by government turn to populist alternatives.

Vauxhall's Luton plant, which employed 37,000 people nationally at its 1971 peak and 1,600 at closure, had operated since shortly after Queen Victoria's death, shaping the town's identity for generations. Workers describe Stellantis, the firm's owner, demanding they halve manufacturing costs to compete with Turkish labour in 2023, only for the company to shut the profitable plant in late 2024 regardless, keeping just its Ellesmere Port site open. Former employees, including Paul Geary and Gerald Shalvey, describe the closure as devastating and say fellow Unite union members have since switched allegiance from Labour to Reform out of disillusionment with the institutions meant to protect them.