This year’s election pitched Scotland against the rest of the country, north against south, Liberal Democrat versus Tory seats against Liberal Democrat versus Labour seats, and London against the rest of England to mention only a few. Perhaps most ominously, it pitched seats with a presence of the United Kingdom Independence party against seats without. In much of the country, you will probably never have cause to know that ‘B’ on a canvassing sheet means ‘Ukip’. Plenty of other parts of the country cannot forget it: Ukip is Labour’s only opposition across much of the north of England.

Last week, Ukip came second in 44 per cent of Labour seats in Yorkshire and the Humber and in 20 per cent of seats in the north-west. Its performance was a vast improvement on 2010, when it did not finish above fourth in either region. This year, it improved its place in 50 Yorkshire seats and 70 in the north-west. Nigel Farage’s ‘people’s army’ lost its deposit in only one seat – a pat on the back for the good people of Manchester Withington. In three seats, Ukip actually beat Labour.

This has been building for a while. Much of the north is a one-party state. This year, Labour won 65 per cent of seats across both regions – up from 60 per cent in 2010. We won 56 per cent of the seats in the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber by more than 10 per cent, up from 42 per cent. 40 per cent of these seats have a Labour member of parliament with a majority of more than 20 per cent, up from 27 per cent, and, incredibly, 23 per cent have a Labour member of parliament with a majority of more than 30 per cent, up from 11 per cent.

In many of these seats, there is little effective opposition – few, if any, non-Labour councillors; tiny moribund local opposition parties with aging ‘activists’. In many of these seats, the Tories are nowhere to be seen, and neither now are the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens hold no appeal. Yet we saw in Scotland what can happen when voters stop feeling that they only have one choice – seemingly impregnable seats melt like a snowman in a microwave.

Ukip’s appeal is growing, and they have the beginnings of the support-base that served the Liberal Democrats so well 20 years ago as they began their rise through town halls into Westminster. Before this year’s elections, Ukip already had councillors on 13 major councils in the region – in North Yorkshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Hull, Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham, Bradford, Wakefield, Cheshire East, Bolton, Oldham, Stockport and Allerdale. Last week, they gained seats in Allerdale, Bolton, Burnley, Doncaster, East Riding, Rotherham, Scarborough and Sheffield.

Most of these are small groups, but support is clearly growing for them, and most of that support is coming from former Labour supporters. Ukip’s average increase in Yorkshire support over the last five years was 13.6 per cent. However, its increase in support was much greater in Labour-held seats than in seats held by other parties: up 15.9 per cent in Labour seats and 10.1 per cent in others. The same pattern holds in the north-west: a 10.6 per cent average increase, with 11.5 per cent in Labour seats and 8.8 per cent in other seats.

Three seats in the region are at particular risk: Heywood and Middleton in Greater Manchester and Rotherham and Rother Valley in South Yorkshire. Each of these is a Labour seat, in which Ukip came second with a high vote: 33.2 per cent in Heywood and Middleton; 30.2 per cent in Rotherham; and 28.1 per cent in Rother Valley. However, what puts them at particular risk is that, in each, Ukip’s vote increase between 2010 and 2015 is greater than the Labour majority in 2015. One more election like this, and Labour will lose these seats.

We cannot afford to be complacent about this growing threat. We cannot afford for our nominally safe seats to be ‘left to take care of themselves’, knowing that they will always return a Labour MP and Labour councils. The lesson of the rise of the Liberal Democrats in the 1990s and the rise of the Scottish National party this year is that this will lead to ruin.

We also cannot afford to ignore the question of Englishness. Ukip represent a bastardised version of Englishness, but the Tories also tapped into the feeling of English discontent south of Hadrian’s Wall and east of Offa’s Dyke. We left it well alone, and that was a mistake. We might not care for nationalism of any stripe, but we have to engage with national feelings which motivate thousands upon thousands of our, sometimes now, former supporters. Our failure to speak to people as they are, rather than as some in our party would like them to be, hurt us badly on 7 May. Ukip and the Tories will be hoping we make the same mistake next time. We must not give them that satisfaction.

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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest. He tweets @MarkRusling

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Photo: redspotted