Six months ago I said I thought Farage might be the next PM and not many people agreed with me. Now pretty much everybody agrees it is possible, and we're fast heading towards the point where that will be the most common prediction. But the real story is that having got to this point, it is very hard to see how either the tories or Labour can recover. All the momentum is with Reform.
The tories cannot rehabilitate themselves because they betrayed their own core vote on immigration and because they no longer appeal to anybody apart from the richest 5-10%. Indeed, if you take the "don't knows" and "won't votes" out of the statistics then that is about the level of support they have now. But what has changed with these recent polls is that there are now a large number of constituencies where even loyal tory voters must now seriously consider switching to Reform for tactical reasons -- these are people whose top priority is making sure Labour don't win a second term, and with Reform way ahead of the tories nationally then in the majority of historic swing seats the situation will now be that these people will vote Reform tactically to stop Labour or the LibDems getting in. I think they're finished as a prospect for national government, though they will persist in local government.
Labour has got nothing to offer anybody at all. Who do they represent? What do they stand for? They were elected on the basis that the country needed to get rid of an exhausted and broken tory government, and a lot of people were waiting to see what they would do in government. And it has become very clear that this is a bunch of people who, for all their lofty intentions, do not really understand the nature of the problems they are trying to solve, and have got no new ideas about how to solve them. They promised change, but all they can deliver is a slightly less dysfunctional and corrupt version of what came before them. And it is not just because they were dealt an unplayable hand -- the problem is also strategic, in the sense that Starmer appears to have no vision whatsoever. All he does is triangulate and manage. People are desperate. They want and need inspired leadership, but what they've got is an AI prime minister.
The libdems have got nowhere to go, either ideologically or geographically. They have solid support in their heartlands but there are very few places where they can make progress in terms of numbers of MPs because they are starting from such a low position due to previous tactical voting for Labour. If you offered them an extra 20 MPs at the next election, they'd bite your arm off.
The Greens have now been completely taken over by the social extreme left, many of whom (such as Owen Jones) very rarely even mention anything to do with ecological sustainability. Great if you want 26 genders recognised, not so great if you think we're heading for worst ecological crisis there will ever be. They are a joke.
Reform now have 4 long years to get their act together -- and they now actually look like an appealing prospect for serious candidates -- people who actually want a career in politics and will be looking at the current polls and wondering whether to give it a shot. Not many people are interested in standing for parliament with no real chance of winning, which is partly why Reform struggled with some candidates at the last election. They cannot solve the UK's long term problems, but they offer something fundamentally different. If they do win then we will obviously be entering a new era in British politics, especially if a Reform government implements electoral reform. I suspect they will put it in their next manifesto and that doing so will seal the deal with the electorate -- I can even imagine liberal democrats and labour voters "lending their votes" to Reform just to get rid of First Past The Post, especially since the introduction of PR would surely mean that Reform would only get one term as a majority government.
But where does that leave us for the 2034/5 election?
It is at least possible that something new and to most people very unexpected might emerge. The moment would be ripe with possibilities.
