By Arianna Giovannini

The results of the elections held on the 1st of May – which included 14 county councils, 8 unitary authorities, 1 metropolitan district, 2 mayors and 4 ‘metro mayors’ and a parliamentary by-election – leave little room for interpretative doubts. For the first time, a populist radical right force (Reform UK) has swept away all the other political actors in England, shattering the traditional Conservative-Labour duopoly that has long characterised the UK political system. Nigel Farage’s party won most of the votes and seats up for grabs, it gained overall control of 10 out of 23 councils that went to the ballot box, and took both of the newly established combined authority mayoralties that held their inaugural elections – thus redrawing the map of subnational governance in England. It also gained a new parliamentary seat.

The implications of this shift, underpinned by unprecedented levels of voter’s choice fragmentation, cannot be underestimated. While psephologists have promptly crunched the numbers and developed in-depth analyses of the vote, it is interesting to build on their work and reflect on the causes behind the surge in support for Reform, and on what could be done to address them. 

Although we should always be careful in drawing national-level conclusions from subnational elections, this time around the political earthquake that started from the local dimension is undoubtedly sending shockwaves across all levels of government.

The first point to note is that the dramatic success of Farage’s party cannot be explained (or discarded) through the traditional ‘protest vote’ thesis. Support for Reform (or its previous incarnations) should now be understood as a long-term phenomenon that has morphed in shape and magnitude over the past decade, but has never fully waned and is becoming a persisting disruptive feature of the political system. Its first manifestation was through the vote for Brexit in 2016. Since then, electoral volatility has seen Boris Johnson taking down the Red Wall in 2019, and Labour returning to power in 2024, only once it managed to devise an electoral campaign around the slogan of ‘change’. Yet, along the way, both Labour and the Tories have increasingly seen votes fraying in every direction but theirs. In other words, the electorate has been consistently signalling that “things cannot go on as they are”. The two main parties have acknowledged this clarion call, but in practice have done very little in the way of addressing it – generating growing disillusionment and resentment at popular level.

The roots of this widespread sense of discontent are clear. Fourteen years of Conservative rule – marked by unrestrained neo-liberal measures, agglomeration strategies and austerity – have left the UK economy depleted and public services crumbling, carrying harsher effects in lagging areas. Beyond rhetoric, the promise to ‘level up the country’ – the central plank, with ‘getting Brexit done’ of Johnson’s 2019 victory – failed to materialise. Labour pledged to change that, but since it entered public office Starmer’s government has been hesitant in developing a coherent strategy to rebalance the economy, and seems to have reverted to a faster version of the old Conservative playbook. 

What has emerged, against this backdrop, is a territorial backlash rooted in (old and new) territorial fractures grafting onto persisting socio-economic divides as well as over-centralisation of power, that deceive and blur traditional class fault lines. The populist radical right tide registered at this election thrives on the vacuum created by a political system that keeps promising ‘radical change’ but then fails to deliver it, and is thus perceived as distant from and out of touch with the problems that affect local communities. Put differently, it is the latest manifestation of the ‘revenge of the places that don’t matter’ that started to emerge with the vote for Brexit – but has since continued to spread across England.

Linking this back to the election results, for example, it is no coincidence that Reform took hold of the two newly established combined authority mayoralties in Greater Lincolnshire and Hull and East Yorkshire. While these two areas have mixed economic geographies, they include pockets of deep socio-economic deprivation, as a result of deindustrialisation and the negative effects of agglomeration and globalisation. In short, they have become stuck in a ‘developmental trap’, consistently experiencing decline in economic growth, employment, and productivity relative to their neighbours and to their own past trajectories, that none of the main parties have been able to tackle for decades. Unsurprisingly, such discontent translated into support for an anti-system party like Reform at the ballot box – not because it has a credible policy platform, but due to its ability to capture and mobilise local grievance.

The results in County Durham provide another, highly symbolic case in point. Home to the Miners’ Gala and the Pitman’s Parliament, Durham has traditionally been a Labour stronghold. The party held control of the County for around a century, until 2021, when the council fell to no overall control (still with a Labour majority). But, as recent research has shown, the area now includes several ‘left behind neighbourhoods’ with high levels of deprivation. Again, Farage’s party cannily capitalised on this, campaigning on an aggressive platform aimed at attracting support from “neglected voters”. And it did just that: winning an astounding 65 seats out of the 98 available, and pushing the Labour party to fourth place with only 4 seats (-38). Reform held 0 seats in the previous administration, making this result even more remarkable.

Similar dynamics can be observed in other areas that went to the poll on the 1st of May, from Doncaster (where Labour managed to hold on to the mayoralty, but lost control of the council to Reform) to the Runcorn and Helsby by-election (where Reform snitched the seat from Labour by 6 votes). To be sure, after this electoral success, Reform biggest mountain to climb to hold onto power will be to demonstrate its competence (or otherwise) in office – an issue that deserves in-depth analysis in a separate account.

Taken all together, the results of these elections seem to suggest that communities – especially in left behind places – care about their place, and will continue to vote for change until they see it happening. And if none of the main political party can seriously commit to take on this challenge, the electorate will keep turning to the most vociferous alternative to the status quo, i.e. Reform. 

There are risks and opportunities emerging from this scenario. On the negative side, Reform’s seismic performance could push the main political parties in government and opposition to mimic its populist stances (e.g. on immigration). Or it could see the government putting a halt to key policies like devolution aimed at pushing power away from Westminster and foster local autonomy – as this could now be seen as a counterproductive strategy with the potential to give leverage to alternative forces like Farage’s party. Either would be a serious misstep, that could end up adding further fuel to Reform’s fast-spreading populist wildfire.

Instead, Reform’s results should awaken policy-makers, prompting them – and in particular the current Labour government – to deflate populist forces by doing what they will never be able to: rebuild political trust by devising a sustainable, long-term policy agenda that is genuinely place-based, open to devolve real power and resources to local areas, and can truly help address persisting inequalities. After all, to govern is to choose: deliver the radical reforms the country has long been crying out for, or run the risk to succumb to Reform. 

Arianna Giovannini is Professor of Political Sociology in the Department of Economics, Society and Politics at the University of Urbino (Italy), and an Associate Member of the Centre on Constitutional Change.