Farage Kills The Two Party System: Reform Dominates in ‘British Midterms’, Taking Seats From Both Left and Right
by Oliver JJ Lane
A “truly historic shift in British politics” has taken place where the national political question is no longer about “left or right”, Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage said as his Reform Party surged in early results in what has been called the “midterm” elections.
The first Britain-wide local election results trickled in overnight — and will continue to do so through the day and into the weekend as over 5,000 local races have their votes counted — revealing in its early stages a massive swing to Reform UK. Party leader Nigel Farage hailed the party’s gains so far, and vowed “the best is yet to come” as the vast majority of elections have yet to be counted, and with those on their way being some of the most promising for his party, he said.
At time of publication, and with little more than 1,200 wards declared out of over 5,000, Reform commands a strong lead with 400 seats. Because the party is new and hasn’t had a chance to challenge these elections before, apart from a handful of defections from other parties during the previous term almost all of their wins today will be gains, with 398 so far being new to Reform.
The Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats — the old centre-right, centre-left, and centrist legacy parties that between them have dominated British politics for centuries grouped very closely behind at this stage in the race, with 256, 253, and 250 seats respectively. This is already a punishing outcome for these titans of Britain’s old political order, but closer scrutiny exposes how bad it really is: while the Tories managed to win those 256, this is a loss of 174 seats compared to last time.
It’s even worse for Labour, who have lost more seats than they’ve won so far, being down 259.
The Green Party has dominated media debate about these local elections — increasingly called Britain’s “midterms” given their rising status as a de facto referendum on the performance of the national government as the country’s politics becomes less stable — but their performance hasn’t matched the weight of news reports and social media attention lavished on them so far. Doubling the number of wards taken so far is nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but it still only amounts to 51 seats.
Like Reform, the Greens would argue the parts of the country they expect to perform best in have not yet completed their count, so expect that to change through Friday and into Saturday.