If you want a window into how a fragmented nation and a splintered party system are reshaping British politics, look no further than the drama at Worcestershire county council. It shows the consequences of Britain governing like a two-party state, when it now votes like a multiparty democracy.

Last week, opposition councillors from the Conservatives, Greens, Liberal Democrats and a group of independents formed a rainbow coalition to remove Reform UK from power. Nigel Farage’s party had gained control of the council in last year’s local elections, winning a plurality of seats but not a majority. What has unfolded since then has been chaos.

On the local election campaign trail in 2025, Farage had said: “Worcestershire is broken. Reform will fix it.” There was a good case for overhaul, as the previous Tory administration had left the council £600m in debt. But by March of this year he said he wished Reform “hadn’t bothered” to take over, having previously described Worcestershire as a “total basket case” when quizzed on broken campaign promises in the area.

The details of Reform’s year in power at Worcestershire are long and convoluted, and culminate in a story of co-belligerence reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But the precis is that Reform’s tenure had been marked by absences, derelictions of duty and procrastination. The Conservative group leader on the council, Adam Kent, has spent the past year publicly documenting these failings, saying in July 2025 that the council was being run by an “inexperienced team clueless on what their view is” on key local issues. On his TikTok account, Kent posted that a month after its election, the Reform-run council had spent just 20 minutes reviewing £1bn worth of spending, a process that should have taken days.

Concerns also emerged over the apparently tyrannical leadership of councillor Jo Monk, who was accused of “authoritarian” attempts to silence political opponents, after sending a legal threat to a Labour councillor, demanding he stop........

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