There are two big and related stories that emerge from these election results.
The first is that Reform UK is having a very good time of it. Victory in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election was widely expected and, to some extent, the surprise is that its majority was not greater. (I, for one, had assumed a comfortable Reform victory.) But it would be churlish to deny that even coming close in a seat that was not particularly fertile territory for Reform (or, previously, Ukip and the Brexit Party) is a significant achievement.
Where Reform has exceeded even the high expectations that existed has been the local elections. At the time of writing, it is on course to win around 900 council seats, two mayoralties and control of at least five councils. Whether Reform proves to be any good at running those authorities remains to be seen. Today is a good day for the party but there are many reasons why it might not be quite such a force by the time we get to the next election, one of which would be a reputation for administrative incompetence. Andrea Jenkyns, Luke Campbell and the various Reform-run councils are likely to get plenty of scrutiny in the next few years.
The second story is a wider trend towards political fragmentation, which I wrote about earlier in the week. Reform is doing very well; the Liberal Democrats are doing pretty well. The Greens have had an underwhelming set of results but remain a force in local government. These are wretched results for Labour and the Conservatives. The combined vote for the traditional big two is remarkably low in what now looks like multi-party politics.
I previously made the point that our electoral system struggles with multi-party politics, allowing candidates with a low share of the vote to win. A look at the mayoral votes shows this to be the case. With the exception of Jenkyns in Lincolnshire, none of the winning candidates achieved a third of the vote. Whereas in 2021, 65 per cent of victorious council candidates achieved more than 50 per cent of the vote, only 21 per cent did this year. Looking at it the other way round, in 2021 only 6 per cent of victorious candidates obtained less than 40 per cent of the vote and this year it was 38 per cent. The average majority for a council seat has also fallen from 25 per cent to 15 per cent. Add in the fact that turnout was low and candidates are winning power with the support of very few voters.
To repeat the point I made earlier in the week, first-past-the-post is under strain in these circumstances. But it also means that a party with 25 per cent of the vote can break through and achieve remarkable results. Reform has comfortably exceeded that.
We should return to the Conservatives. In a five-party system, the Tories are currently in fourth, achieving their worst-ever projected share of the vote for local elections of just 15 per cent. From being the pre-eminent UK party they are now not even on the podium.
It is hard, at present, to work out the question the voter might ask themselves to which voting Conservative is the answer. If one wants to express dissatisfaction with the state of the country, one might vote Reform, Liberal Democrat or Green. If one wants a diligent local councillor, Kemi Badenoch has rather given the impression that the Liberal Democrats might be the answer. If one wants serious people for serious times, Labour conveys that. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are struggling to understand who it is they wish to represent and why.
The risk is that – short of yet another leadership contest – the Tories slip into irrelevance. Reform is on the march, Labour is in government, the Liberal Democrats have something to say on Donald Trump and the European Union. The Conservatives are now our fourth most interesting political party. Being interesting can be an overrated attribute (Liz Truss was interesting), but they risk being forgotten about. The shock of these terrible results for the Tories is that it is not that much of a shock at all.
[See also: Does Farage own the future?]
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