Rarely have municipal and regional elections been described as “historic” without it being an exaggeration, like when a football match is dubbed “the match of the century,” or a film, an indispensable and momentous work of art that would be a sin to miss. But referring to yesterday’s elections in Scotland, Wales, and England in this way is no hyperbole, because they will symbolize the end of the two-party system, the decline (terminal or not, we shall see) of Labour and the Conservatives, the emergence of the far right (Reform) and far left (Greens) on the scene, the rejection of the technocratic centrism represented by Keir Starmer, and the outright condemnation of Jacobin centralism, with three of the four nations that make up the Kingdom possibly in the hands of nationalists.
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And all this, with the prime minister’s head at stake. He has had the noose around his neck for some time, with no one willing to be the one to kick the chair away, because in British political tradition, the one who stabs the dagger is rarely rewarded with the throne. The prime minister has a strategy to cling to power (although it is very doubtful he will lead Labour in the next general elections), to sing mea culpa and present a new – yet another – plan for regeneration and growth.
Everything will depend on how the Labour parliamentary group responds to results that promise to be catastrophic and for which newspaper newsrooms will be looking today for synonyms of apocalyptic, disastrous, devastating, fatal, calamitous, tragic, disastrous, ruinous, cataclysmic, Dantean, ill-fated, desolating, lamentable, colossal…
The far-right Farage offers to move all immigrant detention centers to places where the left wins
Because – it is no exaggeration – that is what they will be for both Labour and the Conservatives, the two parties that have dominated British politics since time immemorial, now displaced to the role of runners-up by more ideological forces on both the right and the left, with radical messages that better adapt to new forms of communication. With the standard of living stagnant and young people’s aspirations to buy a home and have a good job battered, the economic order of recent decades is rejected without nonsense. Yesterday voters emphatically said they want something else.
From this morning, when results start to be announced drip by drip, citizens who have spent their whole lives under Labour municipal governments in northern England will find themselves in the hands of Reform UK, the far-right group led by Nigel Farage, whose policies include a very Trump-like one: to establish detention centers for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers only in those places that have voted for the left.
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Poll forecasts are that Scotland will remain under the SNP’s helm thanks to the division of the unionist vote and the unpopularity of both Starmer and the Conservatives. But that Labour will lose an election in Wales for the first time in over a century, either to the soft nationalists of Plaid Cymru or the far right (most likely the former will govern because they will find fewer obstacles to forming a coalition and will not be subjected to a cordon sanitaire). With Sinn Fein in control in Belfast (where there is no vote this time), three of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom could be led by nationalist formations, with the constitutional tensions and condemnation of centralism that this entails. The demand for sovereignty referendums (or reunification in the case of Ireland) would once again be on the table.
In Wales, nationalists appear as a power alternative and in England, the Greens as the left
In his latest appeals, Starmer asked for a vote for stability in times of crisis and war; Conservative Kemi Badenoch, for lower taxes and better services; Liberal Democrat Ed Davey, to stop the far right and Trump’s harmful influence; the Greens, for an affordable cost of living for everyone; Farage, for a radical anti-system change; Welsh nationalists, for compassion and credibility; and the Scottish SNP, for the dream of independence.
The latest polls in English municipal elections gave Reform 25% support, with Labour and Conservatives tied at 18%, the Greens 17%, and the Liberals 12%. In Scotland, the question is whether the SNP will achieve an absolute majority, and in Wales, nationalists and the far right are tied. How the pie will be divided will be seen from today, and also whether someone decides to oust Starmer or the country continues to have a zombie government. What is clear is that rebellious voters have said they are fed up with broken promises, nonexistent alibis, and technocratic and centrist bipartisanship, and they want a change of scenery. Like from the desert to the Arctic tundra, or from the Mediterranean to the dense tropical jungle.
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