Local elections in Britain on May 7, 2026 – in which the ruling Labour Party suffered deep losses – revealed tectonic shifts.

The two-party system that has been operating there since 1721 has effectively turned into a five-party free-for-all.

Reform U.K., the anti-immigrant right-wing party led by Nigel Farage, won 1,453 seats in local councils, followed by Labour with 1,068, Liberal Democrats 844, the Conservatives 801 and the Greens 587. According to analysis by the BBC, at the national level Reform won 26% of the vote, Greens 18%, Conservatives 17%, Labour 17% and the Liberal Democrats 16%.

If that pattern carried over to the next national election, to take place in no more than three years, the Labour and Conservative parties, which have dominated Westminster Parliament for 100 years, would be all but wiped out. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, moreover, is deeply unpopular and might soon find himself out of the prime minister job.

Yet the elections are not merely bad news for the parties who have ruled Britain for so many decades. They are also a signpost of the increasing political instability of a country that exists as a political union of four separate nations.

For the first time ever, pro-independence parties now control the devolved parliaments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. “What people in London like to refer to, rather patronizingly, as the "Celtic fringe” is very much about to become center stage,“ said Scottish First Minister John Swinney.

A story of democratic decline

As an expert on European politics, I have long tracked what many see as the steady decline of British democracy – especially since I started writing the Britain chapter for the Cambridge University Press Comparative Politics textbook in 2000.

Economic stagnation, rising inequality and a decline in public services have eaten away at trust in political institutions. Britain is, of course, not alone: Across Europe, there has been a deficit in trust and support for mainstream political parties. That process has many variables and causes, but accelerated after the 2008 financial crash and has been exacerbated by rising concern over immigration.

The share of foreign-born people........

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