A byelection in a normally safe Labour seat was Keir Starmer’s first big electoral test as Labour leader. A similar scenario now provides his first test as prime minister. Theloss of Hartlepool to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2021provoked the biggest crisis of Starmer’s time as opposition leader, forcing sweeping changes in personnel and approach. The loss ofRuncorn and Helsbyto Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could be similarly bruising. Labour ought to start as favourites, having won this socially mixed marginal corner of Cheshire by a massive margin less than a year ago. But with polls showing a Labour slump, a Reform surge and a restive, dissatisfied public, all bets are off.
The Runcorn result will set the tone for this year’s round of local and mayoral elections. A Labour hold will take the pressure off a harried government; a Reform breakthrough will stoke the heat up further, boostingFarage’s claim to be parking his tanks on Labour’s lawn, and jangling the nerves of anxious Labour MPs in the restored “red wall”. While Farage may hurt Labour in Runcorn, it is the Conservatives who face the most pain in this year’s English local elections. Most are in blue-leaning parts of the Midlands and south, and the Tories swept the board when they were last contested in 2021, with Farage off the scene and the government riding a “vaccine bounce” in the polls. Nearly 1,000 Conservative councillors are up for re-election in May, and withKemi Badenoch’s party polling below its disastrous showing last July, hundreds look set to lose their jobs. Nearly a year on from their worst ever general election result, the Conservatives still have further to fall.
The big story of these contests will be the search for something new. Reform’s rise has taken the headlines, and with Farage’s party on the ballot in nearly every local contest, it looks set to surpass its predecessor Ukip’s best performances. Many seats are available in heavily leave-voting areas such as Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Kent, all areas where Reform candidates did well last July. Reform may also capture bigger prizes. The party has fielded a defecting Tory MP in Lincolnshire and an Olympic gold medallist in Hull and East Yorkshire, and a fragmented field could deliver either mayoralty to the insurgents.
Reform, though, is not the only game in town for voters unhappy with traditional politics. Both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have been surging in recent local elections, and both look set to make further gains. Hundreds of seat gains since 2022 have restored the Lib Dems’ fortunes in local government after the harrowing experience of coalition, and formed a springboard to last July’sbest-in-a-century result. Ed Davey will hope to cement his party’s status as the dominant force in the home counties with another strong showing in once true-blue shires such as Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire, and perhaps come through the middle in one of the fragmented mayoral contests.
The Greens have also been on the rise, fielding ever more candidates and making hundreds of gains in recent years. Like the Lib Dems before them, the Greens hope that a growing presence in town halls can provide the crucial credibility needed to turn polling advances into Westminster seats. All three Green gains in the general election came in areas where the party had built a strong council presence. An even bigger prize may also be in reach in the west of England mayoralty, wherescandal has tainted the outgoing Labour incumbentand given the Greens an opening in a combined authority taking in their stronghold of Bristol.
With Labour sliding, the Conservatives moribund, theLiberal Democratsrestored to health, and Reform and Green challengers springing up almost everywhere, this will be the first true five-party local election contest. This unprecedented fragmentation puts the electorate on a collision course with the electoral system. First past the post is an amplifier: the winner takes all, everyone else gets nothing. But when voters divide evenly between multiple choices, this is a recipe for chaos.
Hundreds of councillors and mayors are likely to be returned next month despite large majorities voting for someone else. With votes splitting three or four ways, divided opposition will become as important as local support. Subtle variations in geography and popularity, like the proverbial flap of the butterfly’s wings, will often be the difference between triumph and disaster.
Such instability and inconsistency will make next month’s contests harder to understand and their outcomes harder to justify. Fragmented fights with messy outcomes will also underline something deeper: two-party politics is dying in Britain. Voters no longer want to be forced to choose betweenLabourand Tory, and ignore the institutional constraints supposed to channel them into this choice. Support for the establishment parties hit an all-time low last July and has kept falling in polling since. The electoral system held back this tide, much to Labour’s benefit, but no flood wall is impregnable. Next month we may see what happens when the dam breaks.
Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019