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“The two-party duopoly in British politics might be dead,” says Kiran Stacey, policy editor at the Guardian, in our analysis of Thursday’s elections. Subscribe to Guardian News on YouTube ► youtube.com
In England it has been one of the most closely watched local elections in recent history. The early hours of Friday brought big wins for Reform UK, with its leader, Nigel Farage, saying: “There is no more left-right. It is gone, it is out of the window, it’s finished.” Meanwhile, as the Green party won its first directly elected mayoral seat in Hackney, the party leader, Zack Polanski, said: “Two-party politics is no longer dying; it is dead and buried.” The results prompted another round of criticism for the embattled prime minister, Keir Starmer, whose approval ratings are some of the worst in history. However, they are not as disastrous as might have been expected. While many votes are still to be counted through the weekend in England, Scotland and Wales, it appears that Britain is entering an era of five-party politics. The polling expert John Curtice underscored this, saying in the early hours: “The fracturing of British politics is underlined by these results.” #localelections #ukelections #politics #uk