Here are some phrases I don’t want to hear today. ‘Protest vote.’ ‘The cry of the “left behind”.’ ‘A bloody nose for the establishment.’ For while it’s true that the colourless functionaries of our two-party regime will be holding their bloodied snouts today following a bruising blow from the electorate, none of those trite phrases captures the historic nature of what is happening. This is not just a ballot-box ‘screw you’ – it’s an attempted reordering of politics itself by voters with nothing left to lose.
The Reform surge in England is staggering. We might not have all the results from the local elections yet, but already we can glimpse a political upset of tectonic proportions. At the time of writing, 46 out of 136 councils in England have been declared. Reform UK has won about a third of the seats contested so far, giving it command over a vast swathe of English affairs. Labour is being pummelled: so far it has lost about half of the seats it was defending. As even the BBC was forced to admit, as a governing force in local politics, ‘Labour [is] going backwards big time’.
It was, in the words of one observer, a ‘turbulent night for the major established parties’. Labour has suffered the heaviest losses, shedding council seat after council seat to Reform and also to the Green Party. But the Conservatives are getting hit, too: at the time of writing, they’ve lost almost 150 councillors and one entire council. They’ll lose a lot more before the day is out. It feels like the duopoly is on its deathbed, with the pale-blue insurgents of Reform happily reading the last rites.
But even the numbers don’t really capture the revolutionary foment across working-class England. As Sherelle Jacobs of the Telegraph says, Reform is even seizing councils that ‘stayed Labour through Iraq, the Blair fallout, [the] financial crash, through Corbyn’. Working-class voters who put a peg on their noses and voted Labour even when it was overseeing the decimation of their bank balances, even when it was led by Magic Grandpa and his army of trustafarian Trots, are now finally saying ‘Nah, we’re out’. Because they have an alternative now: Reform. This is not just an act of disgruntlement – in Jacobs’ words, it’s ‘history in the making’.
It’s a seismic realignment. It feels like an unspoken, unbloody revolt: the calm but firm defeat of two-party politics by working-class communities who feel that such a system no longer represents them. Who feel, in fact, that the knackered duopoly, whether as a result of its moral cowardice or its strangulation by bureaucracy, is incapable of pursuing the restoration of sovereign integrity and social wisdom that they are crying out for.
Labour and its media sympathisers will comfort themselves today with talk of a ‘bloody nose’ from ‘voters who just want to be heard’, when in truth we could be witnessing as radical a transformation of the political landscape as the founding of the Labour Party itself was in 1900. We could be witnessing another reasoned intrusion of working-class voters into a political realm that they feel is too small, smug and insular to contain, far less enact, their political desires. Much is still in the air. At the time of writing, we don’t know how the chips will fall in Scotland and Wales. And such is the flux of our era that much might change again between now and the General Election. Yet no one can look at England this morning and deny that the masses have executed a coup against a complacent regime by choosing Reform as the new vessel of their moral hopes.
And who are these people? They’re the Brexit people. They’re the people who, 10 years ago next month, defied virtually the entire political and cultural establishment and opted to seize back Britain’s destiny from the unelected suits of the European Union. As John Curtice says, the Reform surge is most furious in those parts of England that voted Brexit. Support for Reform is running at around 40 per cent in councils where 60 per cent or more voted for Brexit, and at just 10 per cent in councils where less than 49 per cent voted for Brexit. So much for people regretting their Brexit vote. The Reform surge is the latest flourishing of the Brexit spirit, of that working-class yearning for a politics that is more grounded, more serious and more sovereign.
We are living through a fake revolt and a real revolt. The fake one is the rallying of student towns, leafy suburbs and digital radicals around the Green Party. Some of these Zack Polanski enthusiasts might have multi-coloured hair and pose for selfies at Marx’s grave in Highgate, but don’t be fooled: they are lining up behind the entirely reactionary cause of identity politics, no more growth, dicks in women’s bathrooms and Islamist grievance. The true revolt is coming from the working classes, who want Britain’s borders repaired, our history respected and democracy to have meaning.
Pick your side: the matcha Marxism of a keffyeh-smothered activist class that doesn’t know what a woman is, or the patient but unflinching plea for a restoration of normalcy being made by the men and women of the Red Wall.
There is a snooty tendency to look down on Reform voters as the tragic ‘gammon’ victims of Nigel Farage’s demagogic trickery. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Reform surge is proof that independent thought still lives on these isles. In defiance of the neo-religion of the distant elites, with its baleful theology of turning Britain into a glorified hotel for both the rich and wretched of the Earth, ordinary people talked, discussed, disagreed and revolted. The heretical ‘lower orders’ interrogated the orthodoxies of our time, all of them, and found them wanting. It is a very English revolution.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
It was, in the words of one observer, a ‘turbulent night for the major established parties’. Labour has suffered the heaviest losses, shedding council seat after council seat to Reform and also to the Green Party. But the Conservatives are getting hit, too: at the time of writing, they’ve lost almost 150 councillors and one entire council. They’ll lose a lot more before the day is out. It feels like the duopoly is on its deathbed, with the pale-blue insurgents of Reform happily reading the last rites.
But even the numbers don’t really capture the revolutionary foment across working-class England. As Sherelle Jacobs of the Telegraph says, Reform is even seizing councils that ‘stayed Labour through Iraq, the Blair fallout, [the] financial crash, through Corbyn’. Working-class voters who put a peg on their noses and voted Labour even when it was overseeing the decimation of their bank balances, even when it was led by Magic Grandpa and his army of trustafarian Trots, are now finally saying ‘Nah, we’re out’. Because they have an alternative now: Reform. This is not just an act of disgruntlement – in Jacobs’ words, it’s ‘history in the making’.
It’s a seismic realignment. It feels like an unspoken, unbloody revolt: the calm but firm defeat of two-party politics by working-class communities who feel that such a system no longer represents them. Who feel, in fact, that the knackered duopoly, whether as a result of its moral cowardice or its strangulation by bureaucracy, is incapable of pursuing the restoration of sovereign integrity and social wisdom that they are crying out for.
Labour and its media sympathisers will comfort themselves today with talk of a ‘bloody nose’ from ‘voters who just want to be heard’, when in truth we could be witnessing as radical a transformation of the political landscape as the founding of the Labour Party itself was in 1900. We could be witnessing another reasoned intrusion of working-class voters into a political realm that they feel is too small, smug and insular to contain, far less enact, their political desires. Much is still in the air. At the time of writing, we don’t know how the chips will fall in Scotland and Wales. And such is the flux of our era that much might change again between now and the General Election. Yet no one can look at England this morning and deny that the masses have executed a coup against a complacent regime by choosing Reform as the new vessel of their moral hopes.
And who are these people? They’re the Brexit people. They’re the people who, 10 years ago next month, defied virtually the entire political and cultural establishment and opted to seize back Britain’s destiny from the unelected suits of the European Union. As John Curtice says, the Reform surge is most furious in those parts of England that voted Brexit. Support for Reform is running at around 40 per cent in councils where 60 per cent or more voted for Brexit, and at just 10 per cent in councils where less than 49 per cent voted for Brexit. So much for people regretting their Brexit vote. The Reform surge is the latest flourishing of the Brexit spirit, of that working-class yearning for a politics that is more grounded, more serious and more sovereign.
We are living through a fake revolt and a real revolt. The fake one is the rallying of student towns, leafy suburbs and digital radicals around the Green Party. Some of these Zack Polanski enthusiasts might have multi-coloured hair and pose for selfies at Marx’s grave in Highgate, but don’t be fooled: they are lining up behind the entirely reactionary cause of identity politics, no more growth, dicks in women’s bathrooms and Islamist grievance. The true revolt is coming from the working classes, who want Britain’s borders repaired, our history respected and democracy to have meaning.
Pick your side: the matcha Marxism of a keffyeh-smothered activist class that doesn’t know what a woman is, or the patient but unflinching plea for a restoration of normalcy being made by the men and women of the Red Wall.
There is a snooty tendency to look down on Reform voters as the tragic ‘gammon’ victims of Nigel Farage’s demagogic trickery. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Reform surge is proof that independent thought still lives on these isles. In defiance of the neo-religion of the distant elites, with its baleful theology of turning Britain into a glorified hotel for both the rich and wretched of the Earth, ordinary people talked, discussed, disagreed and revolted. The heretical ‘lower orders’ interrogated the orthodoxies of our time, all of them, and found them wanting. It is a very English revolution.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
8 comments:
It's about immigration. After decades of the government doing nothing to control immigration, the people have turned to Nigel Farage in desperation as they did with Brexit.
Much the same is happening here regarding Treatyism and maorification, except we do not have Farage.
Let's just hope we're next to vote out our toxic, under performing, racist government.
Go the Pom's.
To Barrie Davis: .....and apathetic NZers will not organize themselves - which they could do with just cause. How bad do things have to get?
An excellent summary of the truth Brendan.
You can’t make this up!
But may l be so bold by observing recent international election results suggest this rejection of the privileged elite is not just a phenomenon exclusive to Britain.
This weekend’s bi-election victory for One Nation in Australia was a carbon copy of what has happened in the UK.
Similar surges in support for “right wing” parties here in New Zealand are an indication that this movement has all the hallmarks of a world wide restructuring of the political landscape and it will not end before the necessary changes are made.
. Of course we should not forget that it comes on the heals of Trump’s MAGA revolt which has clearly emboldened forgotten communities who
are demanding this change.
My guess is that we will see a massive clean out of left-wing governments all over the place at the next general elections based on working class voters rejecting the smarmy false prophets en masse.
Albanese and Starmer will be the first to go if they last that long.
Bring it on.
The problem Reform (or really the native people of the UK) have is that Reform are not really an alternative. Their goal is to soak up rising popular anger and disillusionment in e crumbling UK and direct it somewhere "safe" for the Establishment. "Safety" means superficially talking big but not substantively changing anything.
Farage has been in the Westminster bubble for 30 years, and he is Establishment through and through. You've only got to look at how much he was walked back the immigration rhetoric in proportion to Reform's gains. Then you look at all of the useless Tories who have jumped ship and joined Reform – they've already failed as Tories in government for 14 years, so why would anyone expect anything different.
Then you've got Restore, formed by Rupert Lowe after Farage kicked him out of Reform for being too "extreme" – in this context, more "extreme" just means more in line with rising popular anger and sentiments.
There're are certainly questions about what Restore could achieve given the systemic pressures to achieve nothing and conform to the status quo once elected (e.g. like Trump, like Meloni, like Wilders, like Farage will prove to be, and so on .... the list of Big Talking Populists who are neutered when once they are elected on policies the people want is significant).
My prediction is that even if Reform win, the native UK people will still lose.
and starmer has now pulled gordon brown back into the labour machine. Talk about pis*ing on the British voters.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/09/starmer-turns-to-gordon-brown-to-save-faltering-premiership/
In many respects we are seeing something today akin to the uncertainties and resulting global political convulsions of the 1930s. The discontent, then, was the result of economic collapse, with many losing their livelihoods. No democratic government, whether it be of the left or right, survived the depression, and in some cases, nor even democracy itself, Germany being the obvious, and tragic, example.
Today, indeed, since WW2, the developed and developing (e.g. China and India) nations have experience unprecedented prosperity, and for the majority, peace, the result of collective agreements, underpinned by American participation and power. But today there is a nervousness abroad, the result of American turning inwards, its power proving suspect (e. g., Trump’s unresolved war with Iran, a country with a defence budget just 1% of that of the U S.) People are angry and discontented, with uncertainties in terms of not just the peaceful co-existence of nations, but, for instance, energy security, the opportunities and dangers of new technologies, immigration of different skin colour and/or culture, climatic challenges. As in the 1930s, this anger and confusion are causing people to react politically.
So, we see right-wing protest parties suddenly gaining wider, and possibly decisive electoral support, the U K and Australia for example. This is unlikely in the United States, where there is a constitutional component which has entrenched the two main parties, where individuals can, though not compulsorily, register publicly as either Democrat of Republican. There the Americans have already expressed their discontent by electing Trump not once but twice, though albeit narrowly. Now polls indicate that there, too, is likely to be a major electoral shift, in that case from right to left.
Where New Zealand goes this coming election is anyone’s guess. A return of National, perhaps with diminished support in favour of one or both of its coalition partners, or a return to a Labour, Green, Māori Government, disagreeable as that would be? Time will tell.
Your slip is showing Ewan.
You are incapable of acknowledging the truth where anything involving Trump is involved and will argue black is white if there is even a remote possibility of the Democrats winning at the Mid Terms. In fact they will lose in spite of Trump.
Who in their right mind would vote for a leaderless mob with no alternative plans for the Nation’s future.
My guess is that the recent Australian and UK wipeout will be repeated but in the US elections but in that case it will be the incumbent that benefits.
Contrary to the MSM polls you refer to, the most reliable US pollsters (Trafalgar and Associates) are predicting a different result and this is at a time when the Trump administration has yet to see the political benefits of a successful conclusion to the Iran war, a consequential drop in fuel prices and the financial windfalls available to all families as a result of the Big Bill adjustments.
Even the most left wing US commentators are finding difficulty trying to reconcile their false promotion of Trump failures with reality.
The only thing you got right is your comment that “ time will tell.”
Like all the rest of the TDS mob, you should prepare for a shock.
It is inevitable as night follows day.
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