Some have declared that the era of two party politics is back, with the national battle for power once again between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour is now consistently ahead in polls thanks to the “Burnham bounce”, with the Tories recovering enough to sometimes edge Reform into third place. Andy Burnham and Kemi Badenoch are once again regarded as the main choice of leaders; when voters are asked which are the “main” parties, it’s the same ones that have dominated British elections for a century.
It depends on your yardstick. Earlier this year, it felt as if the tectonic plates might be shifting; there was a long phase when Reform was always way ahead in the polls, running towards 30 per cent, and occasionally it looked like Zack Polanski and his Green insurgents in second place were about to eclipse Labour. The Green victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election, only last February, felt like a turning point; back then, Labour and the Conservatives could only muster about 34 per cent support between them while their new rivals were on a combined 44 per cent and held all the momentum.
But now, Labour and the Conservatives are back up to a combined 47 per cent, and the troubles that have afflicted the Greens and Reform have seen them fall away quite badly. Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski are the most unpopular of the party leaders. The Holborn and St Pancras by-election, won by Labour against Polanski himself, confirmed that trend.
Not necessarily. Electoral volatility means that anything can happen, and the death of the Conservative-Labour duopoly has been declared many times before. Low points usually arrive when both of them are unpopular, which tends to be unusual but that did happen in July 2024. Despite the landslide in Commons seats for Labour, the two established parties only garnered 57.6 per cent of the vote between them (compared to the record of 96.8 per cent at the 1951 general election). We probably won’t see that dominance again, but as recently as 2017 and 2019 the Labour and Conservative combined share was as high as 82.3 per cent and 75.7 per cent respectively.
Definitely. At the Westminster level it feels unlikely that Reform, the Greens or the Liberal Democrats will fade so completely as to be dismissed from contention, especially as they get better at targeting seats in order to boost House of Commons representation.
In Scotland and Wales, the nationalist parties are now very firmly established as parties of government and, at the moment, their relative strength is mostly hurting Labour, traditionally more reliant on MPs from these nations than the Conservatives.
Westminster’s first-past-the-post system often forced voters to make a choice between Labour and the Conservatives but regional patterns are now creating a more varied set of two-horse races. Thus in coastal East of England there is often a fight between Reform and Conservatives, while in Red Wall areas it is Labour v Reform. In London, Labour vs Green may be more commonplace, and the Lib Dems’ principal rivals in the south of England are the Conservatives, not Labour. But numerous Labour/Conservative marginals remain. Depending on the system, proportional representation would most likely entrench the emerging kaleidoscope of political choices.
