Dear John,
Tomorrow, voters across England will head to the polls.
Over 1,600 council seats, six mayoralties, and a crucial by-election in Runcorn and Helsby are all in play. It’s the first major challenge for Starmer’s Labour government, an early proving ground for Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservatives, and the first serious examination of Reform UK’s new political machine in action.
But scanning the landscape of polls and projections, one trend stands out above all:
The real winner looks set to be political distrust and discontent.
** Is Two Party Politics On The Way Out?
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The dominance of Labour and the Conservatives – unchallenged since the postwar days of Clement Attlee – is eroding fast. We saw the cracks form at the last General Election, which was the least two-party election in British history.
Of course, our First-Past-The-Post voting system produced a massively disproportional result. It didn’t allow for the increased political diversity that Brits want to see.
The two establishment parties are up for another major challenge tomorrow.
In Runcorn and Helsby, a seat that Labour took comfortably last year, Reform UK threatens to sweep up their disillusioned voters.
But it’s not just Farage. The Greens and Liberal Democrats actually look poised to sway twice as many Labour voters as Reform, indicating a wholesale fragmentation of the party’s core support base.
The Conservative vote, meanwhile, is also breaking off in both directions. The party is not only haemorrhaging support over to Reform UK, but also defending even true-blue corners of the country from insurgent Liberal Democrats.
The old party loyalties are crumbling. In their place, we’re seeing a volatile, anti-establishment mood that cuts across traditional political lines.
** Voters Want Political Renewal
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Yes, the egregious scandals of the Conservative era – and the milder lobbying fiascos of Starmer’s early tenure – have undeniably fuelled public anger. But something deeper is driving this charged political moment: a sense of national decline, political stagnation, and institutional failure.
If people have taken one resounding message from Westminster in recent years, it’s that politicians don’t care about them. We’ve shown previously that Brits associate politicians primarily with corruption and self-service. Trust in politics has fallen off a cliff, and continues to trend down.
As a result, voters increasingly want something bigger than a reshuffle. They want renewal, and they don’t believe the status quo parties can deliver it.
** The System Is Broken. Voters Know It.
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Amid all this flux, one thing remains depressingly stable: Britain’s broken electoral system. First-Past-The-Post politics simply isn’t built for the kind of political diversity that voters want. It locks in two-party dominance, even as voters try to break free of it.
That’s the quiet tragedy of this moment. The appetite for change is real, deep, and growing. But the system institutionally sidelines alternative voices.
Instead, it threatens to create a new (and, in my view, even worse) two party dynamic with Reform UK occupying the right flank of UK politics. That means more toxic rhetoric, more juvenile mud-slinging, and more two-way competitions for tiny slivers of the electorate.
Those of us outside swing-seats will continue to be sidelined. And the real issues that people care about – whether it’s their bills or the climate or their stagnant wages – will take a backseat to Reform’s hysteria and distractions.
Tomorrow’s results look set to confirm it: Britain wants a different politics. The question is whether we can rebuild our democratic system to accommodate it.
Our purpose now is to mobilise our government into doing just that. We’ve given them the way forward – create a National Commission for Electoral Reform (NCER).
In the wake of these elections, we’ll be ramping up our calls for Starmer to get on it.
17,000 people are behind us ([link removed]) .
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📢 PETITION: Establish a National Commission on Electoral Reform! 📢 ([link removed])
All the best,
Matt
Matt Gallagher
Communications Officer
Open Britain
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