If you aren’t too distracted by the unprecedented events in America’s political system recently, you might have noticed that even more shocking developments have overtaken established and once-indomitable political institutions in Europe. These include the stunning, real-time apparent collapse of the two major parties in Great Britain.

Politico’s Jamie Dettmer observes it like this:

They seem like punch-drunk prizefighters struggling to catch their breath as they slog it out. Is the party over for Britain’s storied heritage parties?

Neither the Conservatives nor their traditional Labour rival have proven strikingly fit for purpose for some time. Their combined share of the vote in recent elections has been falling and the tribal loyalties they could always rely on in the past are eroding. Increasingly the public impression is that neither has the ability to tackle the country’s huge post-Brexit problems.

The Conservatives (a.k.a. Tories), a center-right party from the 19th century that gave the U.K. Disraeli, Churchill, and Thatcher, suffered the worst electoral fiasco in British history in 2024:

They lost almost 70 percent of the 362 seats won just five years earlier. And equally alarming for party bosses, they attracted their lowest share of the vote ever in their modern history — a remarkable humbling for a party often cited as the most successful in the democratic world.

Meanwhile, the left-leaning Labour Party has rapidly lost popularity since its massive electoral win in 2024.

With the two major parties in freefall, the ascendant entity is U.K. Reform, formerly the Brexit Party. Until very recently, Reform was........

© Daily Intelligencer