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Britain could be facing its biggest political shake-up in 100 years, one of the country’s top electoral experts said on Sunday, as Conservative arguments over possible pacts with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK raged in public.
Sir John Curtice, speaking ahead of a round of English local elections on Thursday, said five parties were now seriously vying for votes, threatening the Labour-Conservative duopoly that had dominated politics for a century.
He said Farage’s rightwing populist party — which leads Labour and Conservatives in some national opinion surveys — was outpolling its Ukip predecessor, while the Liberal Democrats and Greens were showing strong levels of support
Curtice, a veteran elections analyst, told the Financial Times that the old left-right divide no longer explained British politics and that cultural issues were now a key factor. “Politics is no longer one-dimensional,” he said.
“The conditions are there for the biggest challenge to the political conventions of British politics since the 1920s,” he added, with both Labour and the Tories shedding core voters and polling in the low-20s.
The Conservatives, who are defending almost two-thirds of the more than 1,600 seats up for grabs in Thursday’s local elections, are braced for a hammering, with Reform challenging the main rightwing party across many areas and the Lib Dems targeting big gains in the south.
Elections will be held for 23 councils and six mayors in England with about one-third of electors in England eligible to vote. Reform, which hopes to win some mayoral contests, also seeks to beat Labour in the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election on the same day.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has admitted that the elections in shire counties and local mayoralties will be “very difficult”, and her problems have been exacerbated by leading Conservatives speculating on future deals with Farage.
Lord Ben Houchen, Tory mayor of Tees Valley, told the BBC on Sunday that his party could do a deal with Farage after the next general election in the event of a hung parliament, in order to keep Labour out of office.
“If at the next election there are a number of MPs in the Tory party and Reform that create a significant majority, then obviously there’s going to be a conversation to create a coalition or some kind pact,” he said. The next general election must be held by summer 2029.
“I’m talking about the practicalities of keeping Labour out of government,” he added. But Badenoch has ruled out national pacts with Farage that could “unite the right”, noting that the Reform leader has vowed to “destroy” the Conservatives.
Kevin Hollinrake, Tory shadow communities secretary, said: “There will be no pacts with Reform. How can you have a pact with a party that wants to nationalise large swaths of UK industry and privatise the NHS and seems to favour Vladimir Putin over Ukraine?”
However Badenoch conceded on Sunday that Tory councillors could do deals with Reform at a local level after the May 1 elections to deliver their policy goals.
“I’m not going into any coalition with Nigel Farage,” she told Sky News. “At a local level, it’s different.”
“At the moment, we are in coalition with Liberal Democrats, with independents. We’ve been in coalition with Labour before at local government level,” said Badenoch, whose leadership could come under fresh pressure if the Tories perform very badly on Thursday.
She added: “A lot of the people who are in Reform now are defected Conservative councillors. So they’ve probably worked with some of these people before.”
Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, told the Financial Times: “The Conservative party is one of the most successful parties in the western world but it is currently having a negotiation with itself about whether or not it can ever win again.
“It seems to be going through a public crisis in confidence in the middle of the local election campaign. One of the most striking things is that it is playing out in public.”
McFadden admitted that Labour also faced a big challenge to defend seats on May 1, with public support dropping since it won power last year. He said the party had inherited “a difficult situation” but insisted it was starting to make progress on bringing down NHS waiting lists.
