Multi-party politics defines British elections this week

THURSDAY’S (May 1) British elections will be the biggest ballot test since last July’s Labour landslide. Yet, it is not just the ruling party under pressure, but also the main opposition Conservatives, which could allow for the biggest breakthrough for Reform UK leader Nigel Farage since the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The shakeup is potentially so significant that one of the UK’s top pollsters, John Curtice, asserts “the conditions are there for the biggest challenge to the political conventions of British politics since the 1920s”. What Curtice points to is the growing threat to the two-way Labour-Conservative duopoly that had dominated UK politics for a century, from Reform UK on the political right, and also the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Welsh Nationalist Plaid Cymru on the centre and left.

To be sure, the exact results remain uncertain of Thursday’s English council ballots, multiple English mayoral elections, Welsh devolved assembly ballots, and also a parliamentary by-election in Runcorn. Yet, what is already clear is the unusual, simultaneous unpopularity of both Labour and the Conservatives.