Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The populist-nationalist bug first gripped the UK in the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU. Yet Britain has long seemed an outlier among its peers in having no hard-right party that was a credible electoral force. The anti-immigrant, arch-Brexiter Nigel Farage’s previous parties did well in European parliament ballots. But they never made big inroads into domestic electoral politics. The striking breakthrough of his latest project, Reform UK, in England’s local elections means UK politics now look more like those of its EU counterparts. Its century-old two-party duopoly is fraying.
Reform’s super Thursday demonstrates that its blend of far-right anti-immigration and anti-net zero stances with some soft-left positions on industry is capable of transforming its recent opinion poll surge into real votes. In different locations it gave both main parties a drubbing. Its by-election victory in Runcorn and Helsby in the north-west, had been a safe Labour seat. It secured the mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire, a Tory stronghold, and won control of more than half a dozen county councils, mostly from the Conservatives.
Third-party breakthroughs have fizzled before, notably the Social Democratic party in the Thatcher era. The Liberal Democrats did well enough in 2010 to join the Tories in Britain’s first coalition government since 1945, but its voters punished it at the next election.
But past third-party upsets often came at the expense of unpopular governments or oppositions while the two-party stranglehold remained intact. The ascent of Reform reflects more epochal shifts under way in UK politics. It underlines the restless disenchantment with status-quo politics, driven by a sense that living standards are sliding and “nothing works”.
Class-based attachments are unravelling. Labour is far less the party of the industrial working class, into which the Conservatives and Reform have made inroads, but increasingly attracts young urban professionals. The combined Labour-Conservative vote share has never been so thin.
Reform is the biggest beneficiary. But its expansion may hit limits. Though it is maximising its support among those most susceptible to its messages, its leader’s synonymous association with Brexit puts a large chunk of voters in the “never Farage” camp. Holding office will bring a scrutiny he and his parties have long evaded. And voters craving alternatives to the duopoly have other choices. While Reform gained in the Midlands and the north, in the south and west the Liberal Democrats and Greens advanced. England today looks like a four or even five-party system.
If this trend persists, pressure could become irresistible to swap Britain’s first past the post electoral system for something more representative. More immediately, it creates predicaments for Labour and Tory strategists alike. The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch looks grievously unprepared for the job of pulling her party out of its tailspin.
Labour’s slide in popularity 10 months after its general election landslide shows it, too, came into office underprepared and with no compelling narrative. It will face pressure to take a harder line on immigration. But trying to be all things to all voters would be a fool’s errand. Labour has correctly identified rekindling growth as the sine qua non of its programme. Only by getting the economy moving can it generate the revenues to fund the NHS, schools and defence. Its best option is to adopt a laser-like focus on growth, and jettison anything that detracts from that goal. That strategy has risks. But it may be the only way to restore its own and Britain’s fortunes — and fend off rivals that tout more radical, but illusory, solutions.
