The old two-party system has been smashed. Andrew Marr asks what happens next
2 May 2025, 14:46 | Updated: 2 May 2025, 15:30
It’s a new world.
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To nobody’s surprise, Nigel Farage and Reform this week confirmed that the old two-party system is smashed. These results were not really about a single by-election, but about a very widespread movement of votes right across England; Scotland and Wales will get their turn next year.
In one way, nothing has changed. We still have an angry and discontented country, which feels that nothing works, and the political class is out of touch – just as we had before the summer election.
The big danger is that, now in a system of four or five parties, and in which the Liberal Democrats look ever more important, Britain faces a sequence of coalition governments ahead, in which no party can dominate. That could well be a recipe for short-lived cycles of revolt and disappointment, putting us into an even worse place than we are today.
How will these results, meanwhile, affect the politics of this Labour government? First, it means that Keir Starmer, promising “I get it”, will double down on the new immigration policies being pursued by Yvette Cooper at the Home Office – including overseas hubs for processing asylum claims, and a crackdown on employers using illegal migrant labour. The days when labour culture was dominated by liberal lawyers are long gone.
Second, it means an even bigger fight inside the government over net zero. With both Tony Blair and the influential Unite union coming together to criticise the current policies as anti-growth and impossible, sounding quite like the rhetoric coming from Reform, the energy secretary Ed Miliband is under intense pressure.
A much harder question is what effect this will have on Rachel Reeves in the Treasury. Voters quit Labour in part because so many were angry about the winter fuel allowance cut, and about cuts to disability payments, as well as a general sense that the economy is not turning round as promised. Back from fighting for Britain in Washington, the Chancellor needs to come up with a convincing new narrative on growth.
Finally, Nigel Farage will have an almost immediate impact on foreign policy; later this month a big UK-EU summit is planned to reset relations after Brexit. This, in itself, could boost to British growth, although it will mean give as well as take. On the Brussels side, they will be asking themselves with whom they are really negotiating – Starmer and Labour or, within a few years, their old enemy Farage? Today’s results won’t make that summit any easier.
But if the problems for Labour have suddenly intensified, then the party leader with the most to worry about is Kemi Badenoch, whose Conservatives haemorrhaged votes everywhere. The more energy behind Farage, the less there is for her. I think the Reform leader is going too far when he predicts the end of the Conservative Party as a national force. But for the first time in my lifetime, it seems possible.
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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.
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