This blog has already been very clear about the struggles of the Big Two political parties in Great Britain. They are in a deep hole, and
they show every sign of continuing their dig. Two challenger parties – one old,
one young – in the shape of the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party seem to
sit more naturally across the great divides in our politics today. And they’re
full of verve and a sense of momentum, while the blue and red teams trudge
glumly around in search of eye-catching and popular ideas.
But what about the insurgents fighting to get in from
outside this new and unfamiliar four-party system? Because one of the things
that was so noticeable about the recent local and European elections was the
rise of the Greens and the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, the continued
success of the Scottish National Party, and the success of Independents and
localists everywhere – while another new grouping, Change UK, seems so far to
have comprehensively failed to get off the ground?
Today, on day two of our week-long blogging marathon,
we’re going to take a look at a political system that isn’t so much bifurcating between Leave and Remain as crumbling in all directions – with concerns about
the environment, transport and housing apparently sitting across the
traditional divide of Right and Left just as strongly as Brexit does. Because
as the Big Two crumble, it’s not just the New Two that are pushing them around:
it’s the little battalions and the sharpshooters too.
The Green surge. We’ve been here before, of
course, since over the winter of 2014-15 and leading up to the 2015 General
Election the Green Party seemed to be going places – only to disappoint as the
date of the polls actually approached. They actually hit 10 or 11 per cent in
two polls conducted in January 2015, conducted by YouGov and Lord Ashcroft
respectively. But now there seems to be a more sustained upwards drift,
reflecting a second and more voluminous inrush of the green tide. The
Extinction Rebellion movement, and the publicity surrounding Swedish
environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, have become a cause celebre among
voters who might once have been attracted to Cleggmania and Corbynism:
increasing evidence of the warming planet is causing voters widespread unease.
Added to a great deal of local organising, on the model
that the Liberal Democrats once used to come back from the brink of extinction
in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the Greens have a great chance to establish
themselves as a permanent player in a multi-party system. Don’t believe us?
Well, they put on 194 councillors in early May, and they won 12.1 per cent of
the vote (and seven MEPs) at the European elections – coming in just two
percentage points behind Labour. The Britain Elects poll tracker now has them on average at 5.4 per cent for a Westminster election, only a little behind
their placing during the party’s much-heralded ‘surge’ last time. It will be
very, very hard for them to win any more Parliamentary seats, partly because
Labour is standing in their way in areas that are demographically and
ideologically fertile for the Greens: but it does not seem totally impossible in the medium
term.
The nationalist challenge. Welsh and Scottish
nationalist parties also had much to cheer. Given constraints of time and
space, we’re going to treat their fortunes together here, though we do know
that these two countries are very, very different. Plaid Cymru first, because
their advance seems the most stunning. They beat Labour across Wales in the
European elections for the first time ever, and they didn’t just squeeze out
what was once thought of as Wales’ dominant party: they beat them by 19.6 per
cent to 15.3 per cent, a swing of over nine per cent since the last such election. Recent opinion polling in Wales, which suggests that Plaid is indeed
benefiting from increasing support, confirm the picture. As with the Greens,
Plaid will struggle to win many more Westminster seats – maybe only two or
three look remotely within reach – but these days, we wouldn’t rule it out.
The SNP’s remarkable run of success continued, with
extraordinarily good results for a party which is now twelve years into
government at Holyrood. The only real way to put this is to say that theyutterly crushed Scottish Labour in the European vote, since Labour’s vote share
collapsed and who nearly came sixth in a country they used to govern without
question – as they have done Wales up until very recently. Labour lost its last
MEP in Scotland, while the Conservatives also went markedly backwards. Opinion polling (opens as PDF) continues to indicate that both the UK’s ‘main’ parties are going to get a
beating in Scotland next time around, with Labour perhaps retreating back to
the single seat it won in Edinburgh South in 2015 and the Tories ending up with
only two to four Scots MPs. They’ve both played right into the SNP’s hands in
so many ways. SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (above) probably cannot believe her
luck.
The independent insurgency. One line of the local
government results that really made many people sit up and notice was the one
said ‘Others – Gains’. Because all round the country, particularist parties of
local people who liked to style themselves ‘independent’ of any party won ward
after ward after ward. In fact, they made 660 gains – nearly as many as the 705
net pickups that the Liberal Democrats managed. In three districts, for
instance Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the Independents now have overall control. Now, these groups are necessarily drawn from all sorts of
people, and seem to represent almost all of the points on the ideological
spectrum. Many of them seem to be civic-minded individuals who have taken up
the baton of the 2011 Localism Act and run small parish councils, before (as
now) trading up into the much bigger world of district elections.
Some Independent groups seemed to be angry about new housing schemes; others were committed to breaking the hold of long-serving councillors who seemed to have become complacent and presumptuous in a world of
First Past the Post elections in which they always won their wards. But it’s
not just disaffection with Westminster that we’re seeing: the phenomenon seems wider and deeper than that, and to reflect something of a wish to, shall we say, take back
more control locally. In many parts of the country, information about for
instance the use and survival of bus routes is very controversial, but not
freely available; new housing plans are absolutely huge in scale and ambition,
but very vague and not really presented in a useable manner; central government
funding cuts have often asked local people to step in and fill the void.
How should we expect this all to turn out when we next go to the polls? Not just some Brexit Party MPs (if
that issue remains unresolved), and more – potentially many more – Liberal
Democrats. But also ever-sharper challenges to the four parties who now seem to be
rotating around the low 20s or high teens in the polls. A lower vote share for the Conservatives and Labour. More wins for the SNP.
Probably an increased number of MPs from Plaid Cymru. And a higher vote share,
if not any more MPs, for the Greens. And all the time, as the success of
Independents and localists demonstrates, a burgeoning sense that this time, the centralised two-party system really is under the most existential threat it has ever faced.
This chaotic Parliament may not be the last.
