There are of course two bits to how we see Governments, the first is the big international stuff and then there’s the home leagues, what happens in surgeries and hospitals, what we get back financially and the state of our roads , police and schools. For fourteen years after 2010 when the Coalition and then Conservatives got in, we breathed in , knowing we’d nearly had a financial disaster and then a decade later we had a health disaster.
A generation has grown into adulthood knowing nothing but financial hardship, whether it be student loans, housing that forces people back to live with parents, a loss for many of a regular place to work.
What had been promised in 1997 was realised by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but it has not arrived from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. They have run out of road in terms of support, they are now part of the problem that Conservatives left them.
Labour’s share of the national vote, as calculated by the BBC, fell to just 17 per cent, behind Reform on 26 per cent, the Greens on 18 and in line with the Conservatives. It represents the lowest combined figure the main two parties have ever recorded.
England
The FT showed a chart earlier this week that predicted just what happened, when it comes to the home leagues, we no longer have two parties but seven. We now know the Greens and the Turquoise Reformers.
I do not think we have changed the way we feel about what we support. There has long been a British nationalism that was represented by Conservatism and is now owned by Reform and Conservatism. There has long been progressive thinking , represented by Labour which is now owned by Labour, Reform and Liberals.
Many people who were nationalist were working class and they have moved to Reform, some people who were progressive have moved to Reform, from Labour and from Conservatives. Liberals have remained constant.
Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is as much part of the United Kingdom as England but had no elections and has been Governed remotely, having no parliament until recently.
Scotland got its act together 19 years and though its electors seemed tired of nothing new happening, have remained the same, semi-autonomous.
But Wales has changed and so dramatically that we can now think of it as moving towards what has happened in Scotland and should have happened in Northern Ireleand.
We are as united in thinking as we are in sport – not very united UK.
In none of the parts of the UK except England, do Conservatives and Labour politicians figure very much.
It is only in foreign policy that we remain truly a United Kingdom.
The question is whether our foreign policy , for which Tories and Labour parties have all the experience, will reassert the Labour and Conservative parties as predominate when we have the next election. Starmer is seen as reasonably good at it , but is Britain really that important any more? The decline in our importance in international affairs happened long ago, we can still be used as a token of another age – wheeling out our King to appease Trump, but the best we can do is to manage our economy without interference.
We are no longer in Europe or in a strong relationship with America, China or anyone except perhaps – residually – our Commonwealth. Do you need a Labour or Conservative party to keep things going? I don’t think so. I think we could have a Green or Reform Prime Minister without losing much influence, for there is very little left of influence abroad.
What about money?
Financially we are in a poor state. We spend more money servicing our national debt than we do on defence and health. We are not growing , despite being good at much progressive business focussing on technology , medicine and financial services. What we do well is financed increasingly by America and though we are trying to change that, we have gutted out main source of finance, pensions which is only now beginning to recognise what the Mansion House Accord should be delivering.
We have done some good things over the past quarter of a century in pensions and in benefits, but the job is only half done and while we have bolstered the state pension with the triple lock on increases, we have done a terrible job with DB and only built the front end (accumulation) of what we call DC pensions.
I am not qualified to talk about what is happening in more progressive areas of finance. Tokenisation, crypto finance and the more obscure areas of private equity and credit are beyond and me and all but a few of us financially up to it. I do not see this as UK money, it is money that flows around the world and our advantage is that people like to focus on London to do business.
Labour and Conservatives are no longer so important
We no longer get told how to think by the Telegraph and Times (unless we’re right leaning pensions) or the Guardian (if we’re left leaning pensioners). There are a number of other papers but for the most part we get our information through our phones and other devices (some of us still call them computers- but they’re now our conduit to disparate thinking).
Neither the Tories or Labour have got a strategy in the way that Trump has. Neither can say they own a part of social media and so Reform and the Greens have become more relevant as they are talking to us on our phones.
At a time of extreme frustration at not getting what we were promised, we – as a nation – turn to those who speak to us in a way we understand. Zack P0lanski and Nigel Farage have the charisma and the savviness to take advantage of the failures of Governments. But now comes the hard bit, how to translate home league success into wider success making laws , representing us abroad and protecting Britain what many see as the slow invasion of our borders by illegal immigrants.
Three ways forward
There seem three ways that we could go forward (they’d call this the the three continuations if we were in TPR).
The first is that Conservatives and Labour find a way to get things right and recover
The second is coalition or consolidation, this looks most likely of the three
The third is that we have radical reform of our electoral system so that we can manage five parties having input in Westminster. Robert Shrimsley sees continuity two as most likely
Whether we have left and right blocks still carrying Labour and Conservative names is another question. The two “major” parties, are not going to stay as they are today. It will not just be the Prime Minister who is likely to change before the next election.
