Multi-Party Politics May Be Here To Stay
5 min read
The two-party system is creaking, and it is not just the doing of Reform UK.
Nigel Farage has blown up the two-party system — again. He was said to have done so in 2019 with the Brexit Party, and also in 2014 with Ukip. Yet here we are with one of the ‘big two’ parties in government with a significant majority. Why should we think this time isn’t just another short-term bump on the road to the system reestablishing itself in 2029?
Waking up on Friday morning to the news that Reform UK had won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election with a wafer-thin margin, and that Labour had held on to three mayoralties, certainly did not prepare us for what was to come. In some places, Reform was able to simply replace the Conservative Party wholesale. For example, in Kent, where the Conservatives started on 62 of the 81 seats, Reform now holds 57. A pattern repeated across the country: Reform now controls 10 of the 23 councils that held elections. The scale of the gains was extraordinary, outstripping expectations and current polling.
On one level, that is the story. Reform UK was able to gobble up the Conservative vote, and there was a lot of it to consume. These elections were last fought in 2021 when a Boris blimp flew over Hartlepool, and it seemed that they would be in power for another decade. The Conservatives held the majority of the seats being contested, and so with Reform taking Conservative votes, it was almost inevitable they would make gains. We might finish the story here, with a warning that the Conservatives face extinction and replacement by Reform at the next general election.
But British politics over the last decade has rarely operated on one level, and the story has both complexity and unfinished chapters. Farage and co were not the only winners, and the Conservatives not the only losers. The Conservative losses were so large because they were caught between leave voting areas where their vote went to Reform and their remain leaning areas where, as in 2024, the Liberal Democrats were able to capitalise. That they could continue to do this even when the Conservatives were no longer the government suggests that the move of more liberal Conservative voters to the Liberal Democrats may be rather more structural and long-term than simply a protest vote against an unpopular incumbent.
Labour might count its blessings that it had relatively little to lose in this set of elections – had the party started on more, it would almost certainly have lost more. Holding on to key mayoralties will offer limited relief, and that the Green Party offered less competition in this set of seats is small comfort (the Greens nonetheless more than doubled their seat count).
The projected national share gives an estimate of the share of the vote each party would win had all places held elections on Thursday. It was no surprise that Reform topped this, though at thirty per cent, this was a little higher than their current Westminster polling – and showed the party was able to turn hypothetical votes to real ones. When set against current national opinion polls the Liberal Democrats taking a higher share of the vote than the Conservatives for the first time ever, is even more striking.
If the two-party system is creaking, it is not just the doing of Reform UK, and it has been happening for some time. Four of the last six general elections have seen the combined share for the two ‘big’ parties fall below 70 per cent, with the most recent general election dipping below 60. The 2017 election — that would never have been held were it not for Brexit — was an outlier, rather than a return to normal politics.
At local elections, the two-party share had been drifting downwards throughout the Blair years as the Liberal Democrats gained seats and votes, only for the trend to be sharply reversed as the party suffered the electoral consequences of the coalition government.
Previously, we have seen one or other of the Liberal Democrats or Reform (and their predecessor parties) perform well at a set of local elections. We got a taste in 2024 of what might happen should both perform well at once at a general election, though largely at the expense of an extremely unpopular incumbent party. This week we got a further indication of how this might look when both the ‘main’ parties are seen by the electorate as failed governments.
For the Conservatives, it serves to reinforce the damage done to their brand. It is, though, easier to change from a failed government to a successful one in government than in opposition, so there is perhaps still time for Labour to ensure the two-party system emerges unscathed. But it is clear the clock is ticking, and having never enjoyed widespread popularity, it will not be an easy task.
Paula Surridge is deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe
