Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party, Reform U.K., is presenting a serious challenge to the governing Labour Party and to the opposition Conservatives.
A dramatic victory in a parliamentary special election. Hundreds of
seats won in English municipalities. A first taste of power in the
lower tiers of government.
By making extensive gains in a set of local elections held in England
on Thursday, Nigel Farage, one of Britain’s best known supporters of President Trump and the leader of the anti-immigration Reform U.K.
party, consolidated his reputation as the country’s foremost political disrupter.
But he may have done something bigger still: blown a hole in the
country’s two-party political system.
For nearly all of the past century, power in Britain has alternated
between the governing Labour Party, now led by Prime Minister Keir
Starmer, and the opposition Conservatives, who last year selected a
new leader, Kemi Badenoch.
Yet with surging support for Reform and gains for other small parties,
that duopoly has rarely looked more shaky.
“The two main parties have been served notice of a potential eviction
from their 100-year tenures of Downing Street,” said Robert Ford, a
professor of political science at the University of Manchester.
Still reeling after being ejected from power last year, the
Conservatives suffered another disastrous set of results. With the
economy flatlining, Labour was punished by voters angry with
government spending curbs and higher taxes introduced since it came to
power.
The electorate rejected both main parties, Professor Ford said, adding
that, were a result like this to occur in a general election, “the Conservative Party would cease to exist as a meaningful force in
Parliament.”
Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer, said the
results also reflected longer-term trends, including a breakdown of traditional class loyalties among voters, the increasing pull of
nationalist politics and growing support for the centrist Liberal
Democrats, the Greens and independent candidates.
“We have been seeing the fragmentation of society and that has flowed
through to our politics,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain
for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research
institute. “There is multiparty voting now.”
The upshot is that both main parties are struggling as they find
themselves competing not just with each other, but also with opponents
to their political left and right.
That mood of public disenchantment gave an opening to smaller parties including the Liberal Democrats, who won 163 council seats, and the
Greens, who gained 44. But the biggest beneficiary was Reform, whose supporters have been energized by Mr. Farage’s vigorous campaigning.
In an interview at a Reform U.K. rally in March, John McDermottroe, a
party supporter, said many people in his region of Stockton-on-Tees,
in northeastern England, felt that the Labour Party had “grown away
from working people.”
As for Mr. Farage, “he is very charismatic, he communicates with
people from every sector of life, he tells it as it is,” Mr.
McDermottroe said.
The fragmentation Mr. Farage has unleashed on British politics was
felt even in races Reform lost, including the mayoralty of a region
known as the West of England.
Helen Godwin of Labour won that with just one-quarter of the vote,
putting her only slightly ahead of Reform U.K., while even the
fifth-placed party won 14 percent of the vote.
Fewer than one-third of eligible voters cast a ballot, the kind of low turnout that is common in local elections. But that meant Ms. Godwin
was elected by just 7.5 percent of eligible voters, Gavin Barwell, a
former chief of staff in Downing Street and member of the opposition Conservative Party, noted on social media, adding that there was a
“collapse” of the two-party political system.
That may yet prove an exaggeration.
Because of a reorganization, the number of seats contested in
Thursday’s local elections was the smallest since 1975, and voter
turnout is always low in such races.
Britain’s next general election — when that proposition will be tested properly — does not have to be held until 2029, and previous
challenges to two-party dominance have faded.
In the early 1980s the Social Democratic Party, founded by
disenchanted moderates from the Labour Party, promised to “break the
mold” of British politics. In alliance with another centrist party, it briefly exceeded 50 percent in an opinion poll. That proved a false
dawn.
Yet with five parties now vying for votes in a system that suited two, British politics has become deeply unpredictable.
Born out of the trade union movement, Labour was once seen as the
party of the working class, with its heartlands in the industrial
north and middle of the nation. Traditionally, the Conservatives
represented the wealthy and middle classes, with support concentrated predominantly in the south.
The loosening of those ties had already weakened the grip of the two
main parties. In last year’s general election, the combined vote for
Labour and the Conservatives fell below 60 percent for the first time
since before 1922, and Labour’s landslide victory was achieved on just
about 34 percent of the vote. In Scotland, the pro-independence
Scottish National Party has reshaped politics.
Mr. Starmer now faces a conundrum: If Labour tacks right to appease
Mr. Farage’s sympathizers, it risks losing support from its
progressive base to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens.
Ms. Ainsley said Labour faces “an enormous challenge” in the context
of a tight squeeze on government spending, but added that it must
focus on delivering for voters still suffering from a jump in the cost
of living.
The Conservatives face an even bigger threat from Reform, as well as
their own challenge. The Tories need to recapture voters who have
shifted to Mr. Farage without moving so far to the right that they
drive more liberal Tories to the centrist Liberal Democrats.
Political scientists also say that a shift is underway that could
transform the fortunes of Reform, taking what has been a protest party
and turning it into a force that could make good on its ambition to
replace the Conservatives as the main opposition party.
Britain’s parliamentary elections operate under a system known as
“first past the post” in which the candidate who wins the most votes
in each of 650 constituencies is elected. Until now that has typically disadvantaged smaller parties.
“When it was just the Lib Dems trying to break the Labour-Tory
duopoly, a rough rule of thumb was that they, and their predecessor
parties, needed at least 30 percent to overcome the biases inherent in
first past the post,” wrote Peter Kellner, a polling expert.
With more parties in contention and no dominant force, the
calculations are changing. “The tipping point for a party such as
Reform is no longer 30 percent. It’s probably around 25 percent. That
is where they stand in the polls,” he added.
Professor Ford said he agreed that something fundamental was shifting
and that Reform was now “doing well enough for first past the post to
cease being their enemy and to become their friend.”
After the latest election results, Professor Ford said, it is “a lot
easier for Nigel Farage to say ‘We are the real party of opposition,’
and it’s harder for people to laugh when he says it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/world/europe/england-elections-farag
e- reform.html
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 00:28:50 |
| Calls: | 10,387 |
| Calls today: | 2 |
| Files: | 14,061 |
| Messages: | 6,416,720 |