The Labour/Tory duopoly is collapsing and with it the political system. The future is a battle of nationalisms between Reform, SNP, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru, argues our Writer at Large, Neil Mackay

You need only glance at the Houses of Parliament. The symbolism is clear. An antiquated, decaying folly from a long-gone era mouldering on the Thames, like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake in Great Expectations: sad, broken, rather creepy and unsavoury, and long due for the bin.

The estimated repairs could cost £40 billion, and take 60 years. That’s Britain, in one visual.

British politics has finally caught up with the building it calls home. The old duopoly of Labour and Conservative has rotted away, like Parliament. The two parties are dead but don’t have the sense to get into their coffins and close the lid.

So the UK now exists in a strange quantum state. The two parties which commanded the country since our great-grandparents were children are finished, yet they remain dominant in Parliament. Come the next UK election, though, they’ll each simply be one of many small competing parties. The Commons will turn into a rainbow of Labour, Tory, Greens, Reform, and LibDems, all hovering somewhere between the mid-teens and mid-20s in polling. Before England’s local election results, polling had Labour on 18%, Tories 17%, Reform 25%, LibDems 14% and Greens 15%.

Then add in the parties from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and you’ve a recipe for coalition governments of many varying stripes and hues. Britain isn’t used to coalitions. The death of the duopoly, and its replacement with a multipolar parliament, will only lead to more chaos, not less, politically.

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