The Local Elections were an aftershock rather than an earthquake

The stunning victory delivered by Reform UK last week has set commentators running with descriptions of a political earthquake, of an end to the two-party system and a redrawing of the national political map. However, while the scale and breadth of the gains secured by Reform are beyond any predictions, the direction of travel is not unexpected, nor is it the start of something new – the results from Thursday need to be reviewed as the second half of the political story that started on 7th July 2024.

The 2024 General Election saw a historic set of figures, producing a landslide majority for Labour on the smallest vote share that any incoming government has ever secured, just 33.7%, and with the dominant two parties achieving a combined record low of just 57.4% of the vote. The choice of alternative parties had widened with the arrival of Reform UK, while voter loyalty to the two main parties had collapsed to new lows. But this was not a one-off and the results this week are just the next chapter of the story.

A few thoughts on where we are in the political cycle and what might happen next.

Political swings are now perennial rather than generational 

I started my political campaigning in an age when people broadly stuck with the party that they felt affiliated to and quite often their voting tradition was passed down from their parents. There would be protest votes and the odd issues-based switch, but on the whole, a canvassed supporter could be relied upon to come back to the fold at some point in the future.

Recent years and events have seen that tie between voter and party severed. Possibly it is down to technology and the deluge of readily accessible information, maybe it is down to fundamental events such as Brexit and Covid, or perhaps it stems from the geopolitical sphere that now sees war in Europe again and an unpredictable trade and economic climate from the Trump USA. Fundamentally, underpinning all these causes is the sense that politics has not delivered improvements for some time and a great many voters have simply become untethered from their belief in democracy – bills rise, services worsen, risks for the future grow and any sense of certainty seems to rely on the old mantra of death and taxes. As a result, we have seen the Red Wall morph into the Blue Wall and now the Turquoise Wall, all within a period of just six years, and it is no longer rare to find a political activist who has at some point been a member of three or four different parties.

With this new sense of voter fluidity and lack of political loyalty, the swings of support that might previously have taken a generation, or at the very least a term, can now happen on a regular basis. I would argue that Reform UK is a symptom of this new electoral world rather than the cause of it. 

I also took to the doorsteps last week and was struck again by the shy nature of the Reform voter – rather than shouting about their support for the challenger party, they generally keep their choice to themselves and use their ballot paper to express their disquiet.

Conservatives and Labour face parallel existential threats

Thursday was a terrible day for both of the major parties and there is no gloss or spin that can succeed in making it look better than it was. Their collective performance warrants a visit from the Guinness adjudicator to certify their efforts at setting new performance lows. 

The headline loser this week was the Conservative Party, as their base of councils and councillors was ripped up across the country and their vote share reached a new historic low of 23%. However, Labour also lost roughly two-thirds of their seats and saw their vote share collapse to another record low, of just 14%. It is often convenient to label county council elections as more naturally Conservative, but that is not always the case – Labour had a bad day in 2021, but as recently as 2013, it was Labour who led in this contest by 29% to 25%. In simple terms, both of the main parties saw around half of their historic county council support eaten away last week.

One fascinating statistic from Thursday is the number of council wards where parties could muster no votes – the Conservatives gathered no votes in six wards, Reform matched that zero in eight wards, but Labour had a list of 81 wards where there were no votes for them.  Add to this that the Labour Party has not secured more than 35% of the national vote share in a council election since 2012, and you see they have just as much to fear as the Conservatives.

There are countless theories on why this shift is happening and many point to issue-based reasons such as immigration, the economy and public services. However, the sense from voters is often that they expect some clear blue (or maybe red) water between the two parties. We now live in an age where the Conservative leadership team face frequent attacks from their supporters for appearing to be too centrist a party, while we have a Labour government that has cut benefits, increased spending on defence and slashed foreign aid – if Marty McFly was teleported onto Whitehall today, he would justifiably be confused about which party is running the country!

It is all too easy for election pundits, and wannabe leaders, to trot out the line that elections are won in the centre ground. That maybe the case, but electors still expect a choice between two different visions rather than two different people in suits selling the same product in different packaging.  A recent example is the 2017 General Election, where a starkly opposed Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn garnered 82.3% of the vote between them, a massive difference from the Starmer-Sunak contest of 2024.

For both Labour and Conservatives, they need to be bold enough to stand for their beliefs, recognising that there is no shortage of vocal alternatives who will happily replace them and bland and homogenous politics will drive voters elsewhere.

Change is hard to maintain

We often talk about the duopoly of the two major political parties in the UK, but they have been challenged before. The SDP-Liberal Alliance secured 25% of the vote in the 1983 General Election, and at one point they peaked at 42% in opinion poll ratings. In a previous round of county council elections, UKIP polled 22% across the country and won 139 councillors – although started to decline from the following year onwards.

By its very nature, revolution breeds revolution, especially when a new regime continues to administer and make decisions that are not significantly different from those before them. Believing in change is very different to delivering change and now Reform UK find themselves taking the reins of several councils around the country, they will be tested by all sides.

Arguably, the last year has been the easiest one for Reform UK – they have been on the march, gathering support, attacking from the sidelines but without any grasp of power. By contrast, the next year will be their hardest one – they now have power, but it is the wrong sort of power! Putting a stop to illegal immigration, refusing planning applications, or ending the push to net zero might all be political possibilities, but not ones that can be delivered from county hall. 

If Reform can survive the scrutiny of the next 12 months and continue to win at the ballot box, then they will be in a position where they can break the historical mould and do what other challenger parties have failed to do. But they have a lot of questions to answer and tests to pass in the next twelve months.

Volatility allows space for others

As already mentioned, Reform UK are not the cause of this dispersal of votes from the major parties, rather they are a willing recipient of a greater political mood, and they have a leader in Nigel Farage who has been able to harness huge swathes of support in his direction. However, that disaffection with Labour and the Conservatives could be channelled in any number of directions and there is no limit on new pretenders entering the space – the Reform UK structure has already been challenged internally by Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib and they will become alternatives to their original party in time. 

Both the Liberal Democrats and Greens had another good day on Thursday and although their success is more regionally focused than the nationwide spread of Reform, their support is likely to grow still further in the coming months.

The move away from the traditional main parties paves the way for more independent candidates and groups, and other challengers from both the right and the left. Reform do not control the anti-establishment political mood and in much the same way as Trump in America, their vote relies on Farage as their individual vote harvester.

The return to first past the post voting in the mayoral contests last week highlighted the unpredictability of the voting spread with the Labour holding the West of England mayoralty by securing 25% of the vote in a five-way split.  

2026 will be the real mid-terms for Labour

The 2026 elections will be a much more significant measure of the political mood, as contests take place across all 32 London Boroughs, 34 Metropolitan Councils, 56 District Councils, and 14 Unitary Councils. With elections to the Senedd in Wales and Holyrood in Scotland, both nations will elect their governments. On top of these, we will probably face some elections for newly combined authorities and mayors, making this a genuine nationwide election and the biggest test that Labour will have to face.  May 7th 2026 will be a critical day for all of the major parties.

Nothing is guaranteed in British politics, and we will all be fascinated to see how events transpire over the next year – globally, nationally and in our local town halls. Nobody can yet guarantee that Reform will not be in a position to form a government in 2029, but neither can anyone predict that the party will still exist at that point, or indeed that newly-merged Conservative and Reform offshoot does not redefine the political landscape again. There will be many by-elections, defections and political battles that will shape the year ahead. 

The one certainty for now is that anyone working in public affairs or local communications needs to move beyond two, three or even four party politics and get used to talking to five political parties.