Reform has dealt a body blow to the two-party system

‘Historic local elections’ are three words you don’t often see next to each other. But last night was surely the exception. While many of the counts are only really getting started, the picture is already crystal clear: the two-party cartel that has squatted over British politics for 100 years is crumbling – and Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK is the party rising from the rubble.

There’s the Runcorn by-election, a Labour safe seat snatched by Reform by six votes – the first time a Faragist party has won a by-election from a standing start. There’s the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty, won by Tory-Reform defector Andrea Jenkyns by a whopping 104,000 votes to Labour’s 65,000. Reform ran Labour incredibly close in North Tyneside (Labour won by 444 votes) and Doncaster (by 698 votes). Even in the West of England mayoralty, Reform came a shock second, pushing the Greens, who all but run Bristol, into third place. Council results are only now starting to trickle in. But already you can see that, as Farage is often fond of saying, ‘something is happening out there’.

Reform has undoubtedly raised its game, setting up local branches, signing up more than 200,000 registered supporters, transforming itself from an electoral pressure point on the Tory jugular to a distinct and durable electoral force, capable of reaching deep into Old Labour territory. If it succeeds in securing swathes of new councillors following the counts over the coming days, it will gain both local representation and hundreds more door-knockers, leafleters and canvassers.

But campaigning nous counts for little unless there is a political opening to exploit. And boy have they been handed one by Labour and the Tories. In national polls, a woke technocratic Labour Party and a disoriented, identity-crisis-hit Tory Party now don’t even make up 50 per cent of the vote combined. Their respective electoral bases have frayed to such a degree that even our first-past-the-post voting system, which has traditionally propped up the duopoly by forcing insurgents to rack up high vote shares if they want to break through at all, isn’t saving them. As pollster Peter Kellner notes: ‘The tipping point for a party such as Reform is no longer 30 per cent. It’s probably around 25 per cent.’ Which just so happens to be where Reform UK is already.

This is all the product not of one electoral cycle, but a decades-long tectonic shift. The old parties, these relics of the 20th century, have long ceased to know who or what they are for, beyond winning power. Their deathly grip over politics has for many years been sustained by a lack of alternatives and a disaffected electorate. Keir Starmer’s sand-castle majority last summer – won on a historically low turnout and a historically low vote share – was merely the most extreme example yet of this hollow set-up. But the tide is already coming in on him.

Brexit may no longer be a live issue in and of itself, but the Brexit spirit continues to reshape our politics. The rise of populist Euroscepticism spoke to a much deeper desire among the masses to be re-enfranchised, to reclaim their clout not just from an anti-democratic Brussels but also a distant and imperious Westminster. That clearly hasn’t gone away, with millions now turning towards Reform as the means to put their interests, communities and concerns back on the table.

Whereas Brexit was the final nail in the coffin for what remained of Labour’s old coalition – the point at which the party, explicitly, chose Hampstead over Hartlepool – for the Tories it was a chance to carve out a new one. A chance they have well and truly squandered by betraying the Leave-voting working classes who gave them that stunning majority in 2019. The last time these council seats were contested, in 2021, Boris Johnson was at the height of his powers and the Tories won a by-election in red-wall Hartlepool (a then flailing Reform lost its deposit). Today, the Tories can only sit and wait to hear just how bad the shellacking has been in these local elections, following their historic rout last year.

Something might be happening out there, but what happens next is anyone’s guess. Voters, having broken free from the old ways, are more up for grabs than ever before. But holding on to them is another question. As the Brexit Tories showed, in this volatile political era, a party’s fortunes can fall as quickly as they once rose. There’s a warning in that for Reform. Creative destruction is one thing. Building something new is quite another. But, Reformers or not, we can all warm our hands on this bonfire of the old politics, which failed so many for so long. It’s gone. And it’s not coming back.

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater