In 1929 the first British General Election took place under universal suffrage. In the light of the catastrophic local election results, Bryn Griffiths asks will the next General Election, on the centenary of this important milestone, also bring us the worst election outcome since all the British people secured the right to vote?

Labour members are reflecting upon whether Starmer’s performance is so bad that he will enable Nigel Farage to enter 10 Downing Street. In this utterly miserable moment on Saturday 9th May 2026, I first attended the Momentum National Coordinating Group and then travelled on to a Lewes Labour gathering to consider Votes Turns and Wipeouts.

The flyer for the Lewes Labour Party Event on 9 May 2026

The Farage threat

If Farage was to enter 10 Downing Street in 2029 he would become the worst Prime Minister in living memory.  It would be as if Enoch Powell, instead of being frozen out by Ted Heath in the 1970s, had led the Tory Party and gone on to become our Prime Minister.  We all remember the massive series of defeats for the labour movement that followed Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, but we can assume that Farage has the potential to be a whole lot worse.

So, how bad was the 2026 local election result?  Is the party facing an ‘existential threat’ as John McDonnell suggested on the Labour Left Podcast back last autumn?  What is to be done to save the party before it is too late?

The bad news

In Lewes, the keynote address was by politics Professor Tim Bale, Queen Mary University London, a co-author of The British General Election of 2024. He introduced, what at points was a doom-laden event, by telling us: “The bad news is there is no good news.”  To make sure we got the point he added that the word “catastrophic understates the situation” and the result was “devastatingly bad”. Tim added that he had been sceptical about a Farage victory in 2029 but he now thinks Farage is on course to win if things don’t change. So, Farage may well be our next Prime Minister.

Earlier in the day at the Momentum National Coordinating Group Mike Phipps, the Labour Hub editor, had suggested that the 2026 elections signalled a fracturing of Labour’s progressive coalition. Labour now not only faces the loss of some working-class votes to Reform but also the peeling away of progressive voters to the nationalists, in Scotland and Wales, and to the Greens as well.   Due to the crisis of Labour, progressive voters now have other places to go.

What actually happened on Thursday 9th May 2026, according to Tim Bale, was that Nigel Farage managed to reassemble much of the Boris Brexit coalition, but this time it was to  support Reform.  As a result, according to Sky TV, it was Reform who were the clear winners with 27% of the vote. The Tories followed behind with 20% of the vote and Labour came third with 15%.  The Greens and Liberal Democrats were very close on our tails with 14% with the balance being made up by other parties.  The translation of local election votes into national percentages is a difficult task and the percentage figures vary a little across outlets but the story is always the same: Reform won and the electorate’s message is universally bad for Labour.

Professor Tim Bale, Queen Mary University London, a co-author of The British General Election of 2024 addresses the Lewes Labour Party event

According to Tim Bale, another disturbing aspect of the local election result is the resurgence of the Scottish National Party and the rise of Plaid Cymru which means Labour can no longer be seen as a national party.  It is as if Tom Nairn’s Break up of Britain is happening before our very eyes.

Fragmentation

In the aftermath of the Caerphilly by-election and a local council by-election in Colchester, I told A Story of Fragmentationin Britain’s two-party system.  The fragmentation of United Kingdom electoral politics has previously been mapped by Hannah Bunting, the Co-Director of the Elections Centre at the University of Exeter, when she wrote in The Conversation last year that “UK local elections delivered record-breaking fragmentation of the vote”.  In Hannah’s words, “the 2025 council election broke records for the extent of fragmentation – a significant movement away from the dominance of the two parties that have dominated British politics for the past century.”  

The process of fragmentation consolidated in the 2026 local elections, with the pollster John Curtice reporting a record low of 34% for the combined total of Labour and the Tories who historically have been the two main parties under the first past the post electoral system.

Given this political fragmentation taking place across Britain, we need to look at the party-specific electoral stories which are emerging to help us map the new political landscape.

The Greens

John Curtice reported that in his calculations the Greens got around 18% of the vote with Labour and the Conservatives trailing with 17% each.  The figures confirm Tim Bale’s suggestion that “catastrophic” understates the seriousness of the result for Labour.  Bale went on to explain how the Labour seats tally tells a misleading story.  Reform may have been winning the seats in big numbers but in many cases the explanation for their victories was that it was the Greens who were reducing Labour’s vote and handing seats to Reform as our supporters abandoned Labour to the left.

To make matters much worse, Tim Bale reported that polling by Focal Data suggests that the Green wave is a more permanent phenomenon than a temporary protest vote. 

Labour

The Labour story is utterly depressing.  The Starmer narrative that this is mid-term blues and we must keep our nerve and keep on track is utterly delusional. It overstates Labour’s ability  to bounce back. Labour councillors form the bulk of Labour’s door step campaigners so when you lose 1,496 Labour councillors you also lose a large proportion of our door knockers.  It is also the case that in many areas councillor expenses pay for our Labour leaflets. Without councillors how do we fund our leaflets next time?

Bale also pointed out how damaging the impact of Starmer’s stance on Gaza had been to Labour’s previously strong support in the Muslim community.  Bale said that Starmer’s Nick Ferrari interview on Gaza had been one of the most damagingly impactful statements by a party leader that he could remember when it came to losing votes.

Reform

The Reform re-creation of the Boris Brexit coalition to win a vote of 26% and 1,451 new seats is utterly depressing.  Tim Bale pointed out that the Conservatives on these kinds of results would ensure that we get a Reform Government.  The only point of doubt is whether they would seek to heal the division on the right after the 2029 General Election, or would they even more frighteningly come to some arrangement with Farage before the election even takes place? If they were to heal their divisions with some form of electoral understanding before 2029, the General Election result would be much worse.

The Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats did not make much progress but along with the Greens they form another part of a picture of a fragmenting left of centre electoral bloc. 

Mainstream

Back in Lewes, another former Labour Left Podcast guest Neal Lawson of Compass, a key mover of Mainstream, the new ‘soft left’ organisation, was in barnstorming form.  Compass had previously pointed out in their aptly named report Thin Ice – Why the UK’s progressive majority could stop Labour’s landslide melting away that an electoral strategy that leans heavily towards trying to out-Farage Farage on his own anti-migrant territory was fatally flawed as it would undermine our own electoral base.  Neal who has been vindicated and was visibly unhappy about it captured the mood of the meeting. 

Meanwhile, Mark Perryman, who organised the event and recently published The Starmer Symptom, reviewed on Labour Hub here, pointed out that 36 of the top 50 Green target seats at the next General Election are Labour seats and, echoing other speakers and John McDonnell MP, suggested Labour is facing an existential crisis.

I left Lewes more convinced than ever that we must back the candidates in Labour’s National Executive elections who say they wish to Reset the Labour Party.  We need to back candidates across Labour’s progressive majority which include both supporters of the Centre Left Grass Roots Alliance and the newly formed Mainstream.  I hope you will join me in backing all the candidates who stand for rebuilding basic democracy, pluralism and fair process within our party.

What is to be done?

If we are to stop Nigel Farage entering Downing Street we need to rebuild Labour’s ‘progressive coalition’. We are up against a Reform Party which has rebuilt the Boris Brexit coalition so the task is absolutely urgent.

To re-start the important task of progressive coalition-building, we need a change of leadership but we also need to change the toxic culture brought about by Labour Together which is a systemic problem at the very heart of the Labour machine.  It’s a culture eloquently described by Paul Holden in the recent Labour Left Podcast. Labour’s Cabinet, with the possible exception of Ed Milliband is no place to look for a new Leader as they were hand-picked by Labour Together and Keir Starmer to take the Party in the direction which has caused us so much damage.

At the time of writing it seems clear that Starmer is going and he will not be the Leader of the Labour Party when we fight the next General Election.  Starmer’s departure is so clear that in Lewes even Christabel Cooper, the Director of Research at Labour Together conceded Starmer would not lead us into the next General Election. What is not clear is the manner of his departure.  Will he leave suddenly in an attempt to allow the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to circumvent a proper discussion within the party and attempt a PLP coronation?  Will he be forced to depart to a clear timetable to allow for a smooth and orderly transition this year?  Starmer is currently threatening Labour members with a continuation of his leadership so perhaps he will stagger on to be felled by yet another crisis in the not-so-distant future.

Christabel Cooper, the Director of Research at  Labour Together addresses Lewes Labour Party flanked by (l-r) Peter Lamb MP, Mark Perryman and Compass’s Neal Lawson.

Given Labour’s problems are so much more than a Labour Leader who is hated by a large part of the electorate we need a plan that reaches far wider than a change in the face at the top.  I would suggest the following questions would be good ones to pose to any of the leadership candidates that emerge.

Will you shoot rightwards rather than leftwards to do all you can to stop Nigel Farage entering Downing Street? In the local elections Labour’s relentless attacks on the Greens led by Labour Together’s toxic factionalist and Cabinet member Steve Reed MP were utterly shameful. If we are to attract Green voters back to the Labour fold we need to address their policy concerns and make Nigel Farage our main enemy.

What will you do to  save the link to unions like UNITE and show that Labour will again act for working people? An important feature of Labour’s existential crisis is the possibility of losing big trade union affiliations, most notably UNITE’s. Not only would this devastate Labour’s finances but further loosen Labour’s identity as a Party that represents working class people, further accelerating the fragmentation of Labour’s base. 

How will you restore Labour’s democracy? Labour’s internal culture is toxic with excellent hard working Labour representatives being dumped by the party.  To give one clear example, Hackney MP Diane Abbott, the Mother of the House and Britain’s first Black woman MP, has had the whip withdrawn.  The result has been a moribund local party and the election of a Green Mayor in Hackney.

Would you signal an end to Labour’s creeping authoritarianism by supporting John McDonnell MP’s call for an independent inquiry into Labour Together? If we are to show that Labour is bringing an end to the toxic culture that led to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the United States Ambassador, the Party needs to signal a clear break with Labour Together.  Labour needs to be apologising to the British public and an independent inquiry would be a great way to signal we have started to change.

Will you support Labour’s Conference policy of proportional representation to ensure that Nigel Farage’s Reform could not enter Downing Street with as little as say 28% of the vote? We should not risk Nigel Farage following Keir Starmer by securing his own wide but shallow parliamentary majority. A new leader needs to be crystal clear on this policy so in the event of a hung parliament we know we can forge a coalition to lock out Nigel Farage.

Will you question Labour’s long held policy of Atlanticism and forge an ethical foreign policy independent of Donald Trump and his ally Benjamin Netanyahu? Labour needs a new debate on its approach to foreign policy now that events in Gaza and Iran have well and truly broken the so called  ‘special relationship’.  In a multi-polar world we need to reconsider, in the words of the late Robin Cook MP, what an ‘ethical foreign policy’ should look like.

When Starmer goes, we should support an attempt by the Socialist Campaign Group to stand a candidate but it is very likely that the Morgan McSweeney-instigated rule change that requires around 80 MP nominations to get on the ballot will prevent this from happening.  To facilitate a proper leadership election taking place we need to push back against any rushed attempt to secure a coronation by the Parliamentary Labour Party.  Now more than ever we need a serious debate with time, if we are going to save the Labour Party and stop Nigel Farage.

If we cannot have a Campaign Group candidate on the ballot paper I think Andy Burnham is best placed to answer all the questions above. The obvious concern after Labour Together’s factional blocking of Andy’s attempts to re-enter Parliament will be that the members’ favoured choice will fail to even make the ballot paper.

Can we stop Farage?

The big question is can Farage be stopped in 2029?  The answer is that there is clearly the  potential to beat him as we know from the local elections that there is a left of centre electoral bloc made up of the Greens, Labour and the Liberal Democrats which commands the votes of around half the electorate.  The problem is that under first past the post there is every possibility that Farage supported by the Conservatives could enter 10 Downing Street with as little as say 28% of the vote. 

The difficult task is to reconstruct Labour as a progressive bloc which can win or at least get as far as achieving a hung parliament from which an anti-Farage coalition can emerge.  But we all know that the precondition for embarking on the long march to the re-creation of Labour as a progressive coalition is the removal  of Sir Keir Starmer as our Labour leader and the end of Labour Together’s toxic political culture at the heart of our party.  If we don’t carry out these essential political tasks we will all be doomed and Nigel Farage will be our next Prime Minister.

What happens next in the Labour Party matters to the whole of the left.  It is clear that the Greens cannot win a parliamentary majority alone so who becomes the next Labour leader will be crucial to us all.  If there is a hung parliament will the Labour Leader in 2029 pick up the phone to call Zach Polanski?  Will they be prepared to back proportional representation? Will they have a respectful conversation with the nationalists of Scotland and Wales? We know the answers we need to hear if we are going to rebuild Labour as a progressive coalition to stop Farage and win.

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes of the podcast here  or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple, etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.

To explore the key themes in this article you may wish to watch the Labour Left Podcast with Paul Holden to understand the role of Labour Together.  The latest podcast with David Renton looks at the threat of the extreme right.

Main image: the author out leafleting in Colchester’s New Town and Christ Church. Photos c/o the author.