True electoral earthquakes in Britain usually come in general elections. But Thursday’s ballots for scores of councils in England and the parliaments of Scotland and Wales have, for now, smashed the century-old Labour-Conservative duopoly. Two years after Labour’s landslide election victory showed the centre broadly holding, British politics has fragmented into an unstable kaleidoscope that makes forecasting the next general election almost impossible. The biggest gainer is Nigel Farage’s nationalist Reform UK, which in many areas has displaced the Tories as the main opposition party. The biggest loser, after Labour’s predicted dismal showing, is surely the political career of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
The results reflect above all an electorate weary of economic stagnation and strained public services, whose yearning for “change” is not being satisfied by the traditional UK parties of government. Labour’s pledge to replace Tory turbulence with competence and stability held out the prospect of rebuilding business confidence and rekindling growth. The failure of Starmer’s government to achieve either stability or growth, and of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to rebuild themselves into credible contenders, has propelled voters in multiple directions. In some urban areas they are turning to the Greens, reinvented as “eco-populists” by their leader Zack Polanski — leaving Labour now facing insurgent challengers from both the right and the left.
Labour’s weakness in Scotland has enabled the Scottish National Party to extend its 19 years in government, while in Wales the nationalist Plaid Cymru is set to replace it as biggest party for the first time since devolution in 1999. Ominously for the UK union, governments in three of its four nations are now led by parties whose goal is to break away.