In Britain the anti-establishment tide rises

Both main parties are in deep trouble

For once the hype may not be just hype. The local election results in Britain last week were dramatic and have changed the political landscape, maybe forever. Support for Nigel Farage’s anti-establishment Reform UK surged, giving it sweeping gains at the expense of both the Conservatives and Labour, who dropped into third and fourth place behind the Liberal Democrats in terms of seats won. The upset resembles the country’s last elections to the European Parliament in 2019, but is otherwise pretty much unprecedented.

Establishment supporters might have hoped that the disastrous start to Donald Trump’s US presidency would have dented Mr Farage’s movement, which is made very much in Mr Trump’s image. After all incumbent governments in both Canada and Australia have done unexpectedly well against Trumpist challenges both just before and just after these elections. But the surge of support for Reform since last year’s general election appears unaffected. Ever since the Brexit referendum in 2016, establishment politicians have hoped to stem and reverse the populist tide - but any victories appear fleeting. The idea that Reform could win the next general election is taken seriously - and yet the other parties seem to have little idea about how the tide might be turned, beyond a complacent hope that it will collapse under its own contradictions, and people will come to their senses.

The Conservatives are in the deepest trouble. Last year I suggested that they and Reform were locked in an existential struggle for the conservative vote, and one of them would need to prevail before turning to the centre ground to broaden their support - I called it “the two-step”. I said then that the local elections would be a vital battleground - and one where the Conservatives, which much better depth of organisation and local knowledge, had advantages. Mr Farage got that memo, and threw in a massive and well-funded effort to do well. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, on the other hand, didn’t. Her passive approach was very generously called “rope a dope” by a Times columnist - after a boxing strategy popularised by Mohammed Ali, especially in his victory ver George Foreman. The idea is that you let your opponent exhaust themselves while your save for effort for later. Mrs Badenoch reasons that she needs more time to put distance between her and the discredited Tory-led governments of 2010-2024, and to establish a new narrative. But this is surely no excuse for pretty much giving up on the fight. She could have toured the country to rally her beleaguered troops; she could have pointed out how her candidates had much better local knowledge than the Reform newcomers; she could have tried to make the most of local organisation and themes. But she did practically nothing. The results were always going to be bad - the Tories were defending seats won on a high in 2021 - but any damage limitation would have helped. Reform now have the opportunity to build local infrastructure and networks, while those assets have suffered for the Conservatives, possibly terminally in some areas. Mrs Badenoch clearly does not understand what it takes to lead an organisation composed of human beings, and has been completely outplayed by Mr Farage. The party’s only hope looks to be self-inflicted wounds from Reform - but Mr Trump has shown how frustrating waiting for such opportunities can be. In 2019, when last faced with this sort of challenge, the Tories were in government, and their leader was able to cut a deal with Mr Farage to “Get Brexit Done” - a move which eclipsed Mr Farage for years. Mr Farage has wised up to that, and no such opportunity exists today.

What Reform have done is to revive the coalition of voters that won the Brexit referendum. This included many working class voters, especially in the Midlands, northern England and Wales - together with conservative middle-class voters in the suburbs and rural areas. Brexit itself is sinking in popularity, and its supporters are dying off faster than those that opposed it - but, following Mr Trump, Mr Farage has been able to add younger voters to the coalition, especially young men, and, I suspect, many ethnic minority voters. This coalition has an efficient electoral distribution under the country’s electoral system - Brexit won by a narrow margin in terms of votes, but a landslide in terms of parliamentary seats. If Mr Farage can complete his demolition of the Tories, he will have a very viable shot at winning a majority in the general election.

Labour are rightly worried. They fared just as badly as the Conservatives in these elections - and from a lower base. They lost one of their safest seats to Reform in a parliamentary by-election. They are leaking votes to both left and right - and the government seems aimless. It makes token concessions to conservative voters to no visible effect, while angering its liberal and left core. Still, they can draw some hope from the Canadian and Australian examples. They can perhaps use the surge of Reform to rally an anti-Reform coalition. In Canada the Liberals squeezed smaller parties ruthlessly, even as their conservative opponents marshalled enough of a vote share to deliver a landslide in UK conditions - their votes are very inefficiently distributed in Canada. In Australia it was the Alterative Vote system (now usually referred to as ranked preference voting) that achieved a similar effect - Labor’s vote share did not improve by much, yet delivered a substantial majority.

What of the other parties? The Lib Dems did very well - though in many cases this was because of the vagaries of the electoral system splitting their opposition. But they are showing genuine strength in some parts of the country, especially in better-off former Conservative strongholds. The party is offering itself as a safe home for liberally minded former Conservative supporters. The strategy is plainly working, but limited in scope. The party boasts that it may be able to overtake the Tories at the next general election - but does not say that this still mean that it will be the third largest party. The Greens have also made progress, but they underwhelm. They showed promise in the West of England mayoral race, thanks to the low bar offered by the electoral system, but ended up third. It is the only national party standing clearly to the left of Labour, but can’t reach critical mass. Perhaps these elections, where there was not much of the Labour left to pick off, were not a good test of that idea.

For today I will finish with three thoughts. The first is on the electoral system. Support nationally is now split between five parties than can confidently aim to reach 10% of the vote (if that is a bit touch and go for the Greens), plus two more, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, who can achieve that in Scotland and Wales respectively; in some areas independents, especially those provoked by the horrors of the Gaza conflict, can present a strong challenge too. The electoral system does not handle this well. In one contest the winner (a Lib Dem as it happens) secured under 19% of the vote. In the West of England mayoralty the winner (Labour) took just 25%. This delivers no kind of a mandate, and the results can be well adrift of people’s wishes. This isn’t democracy. The last government, with breathtaking cynicism, abolished the second-preference system for mayoral contests. The new government did not bother to restore it for this time, or institute the much better ranked-preference system. That is part and parcel of the prime minister’s indifference to the idea of electoral reform. And yet the Australian election shows the merits of using that system when things start to fragment - even if you believe in the single-member constituency system. It is too much to hope that the government will take seriously anything so radical.

The second thought is that Reform may have succeeded too well for its own good. It now actually controls a number of County Councils; it is rumoured that many of their candidates hadn’t expected to win and are unready to accept office; their promises of radical action do not reflect the highly constrained nature of modern British local government after many years of budget cuts. Things could get messy, and Mr Farage might find his hands full. But whether this will seriously damage the party on the national scene remains open to doubt. However, these seats come up for re-election in 2029 - and Labour could delay the next general election until after this. A backlash against Reform might develop just in time.

The third thought is a much broader one, to which I will return soon. The establishment parties - by which I mean Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with the Greens on the fringe and the SNP too - have little idea what to do about the emergence of the new Brexit coalition. They have constantly hoped that it will burn out or go away. Instead it is finding new recruits. Labour’s leader, Sir Keir Starmer, thought he had the answer: steady, managerial competence, taking the heat out of politics. But that does not match the challenge that the country faces, and he doesn’t seem to know what to do. Neither does Mrs Badenoch; the Lib Dems and the Greens try to ignore the problem by narrowing their sights and leaving the heavy lifting to the big boys. the prospects for liberals are grim indeed?