Britain Leaves Two-Party Politics Behind |
Get audio access with any FP subscription. Subscribe Now ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN
Get audio access with any FP subscription.
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN
On May 7, voters across the United Kingdom will elect new local councils, municipal authorities, and devolved national governments. These elections—don’t call them the British midterms—could be seismic.
It is starting to look as if the two-party Westminster system, the Labour Party and Conservative Party duopoly that has dominated U.K. politics for more than a century, is coming apart. Anti-establishment sentiment takes on a slightly different form in each constituent part of the U.K.; collectively, these trends could weaken British political unity.
On May 7, voters across the United Kingdom will elect new local councils, municipal authorities, and devolved national governments. These elections—don’t call them the British midterms—could be seismic.
It is starting to look as if the two-party Westminster system, the Labour Party and Conservative Party duopoly that has dominated U.K. politics for more than a century, is coming apart. Anti-establishment sentiment takes on a slightly different form in each constituent part of the U.K.; collectively, these trends could weaken British political unity.
In England, Labour and the Tories are losing support on the right to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and on the left to Zack Polanski’s ecosocialist Green Party. The separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) is on course for a fifth consecutive victory at Holyrood, Scotland’s semi-autonomous parliament, while Reform could push Labour, once the dominant party, into third place. Finally, in Wales, the center-left nationalist Plaid Cymru is surging alongside Reform.
It’s worth putting all of this in perspective. In the 1997 general election, the Labour Party and the Conservatives secured more than 23 million votes between them, or 74 percent of all votes across the U.K.—leaving smaller parties, including the SNP and Plaid, with barely more than one-quarter of the vote. (At the time, the far-right Reform didn’t exist, and the Greens were marginal.) Today, Labour and the Tories are polling at just 15 and 16 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Reform clocks in at 25 percent and the Greens at 21 percent.
In other words, nearly three decades after Tony Blair’s era-defining Labour victory in the late 1990s, British voting patterns have altered beyond recognition. The principal political casualty of this shift will be incumbent........