The Guardian View on England’s Local Elections: We Must Build Something Better Than This
As the local elections in England unfold, the country’s politics is experiencing a period of unprecedented upheaval. The two major parties of the 20th century, the Conservatives and Labour, are in a state of slow-motion collapse, while the populist right, led by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, is surging ahead. The Liberal Democrats are also resurgent, and the fragmented progressive left is scrambling for survival. According to The Guardian, this week’s local elections find the traditional party structures crumbling, with the polls indicating a significant shift in voter sentiment.
The narrative of these elections may be set by the crucial byelection in Runcorn and Helsby, where Reform UK is favourite to overturn Labour’s 14,700 majority. Even a close result would be small comfort for the governing party, as it struggles to come to terms with the haemorrhaging of enthusiasm among its core supporters. The Guardian notes that Labour’s election guru, Morgan McSweeney, took a gamble by chasing a thin sliver of the party’s Reform-minded voters, but this risks alienating the party’s progressive base while failing to win over those already lost.
The Conservatives, however, are facing an even more dire situation. They look set to lose hundreds of councillors on Thursday, squeezed by Reform UK from the right and the Liberal Democrats from the left. This will have significant consequences for their control of the 16 contested county and unitary councils they currently run. The Guardian quotes the polling expert Sir John Curtice, who warns that British politics faces its biggest challenge in a century.
As the Conservatives confront the possibility of heavy defeat and existential collapse, there are fears that a new political settlement may emerge before the next general election in 2029. The party may find itself negotiating a second "coupon election", recalling the 1918 pact where candidates from different parties fought under a shared banner to prevent mutual annihilation. The Guardian argues that the logical response to this crisis would be a shift towards proportional representation, but instead, the move to first-past-the-post in mayoral elections will magnify the distortions of an already broken system.
The introduction of first-past-the-post in mayoral elections, pushed through by Boris Johnson’s government and accepted by Labour, will have significant consequences for progressive voters. In newly contested mayoralties like Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire, where Reform UK’s vote last July often topped 20%, first-past-the-post all but clears the path to victory for Nigel Farage’s party. The Guardian cites Persuasion UK, a polling outfit, which cautions that Labour risks focusing too much on the populist right, and that many Labour voters would support the Greens or the Liberal Democrats.
In conclusion, The Guardian argues that Labour must build something better than the current system, which is crumbling before our eyes. The party ought to back electoral reform, but it should also moderate its language on asylum and immigration, spend big on public services, and make every fight a choice between it and Reform UK. As the local elections unfold, it is clear that the next few years will be critical in shaping the future of English politics.
Source: The Guardian.
