Replacing Labour

The 2026 UK Election

He sings Antisemitic songs, too.

By Josh White

Labour's disastrous performance in the UK elections has created an opening for radical politics.

For now, analysis focuses on the downfall of British social democracy and its implications for the country’s future.

Keir Starmer is facing questions about his leadership after Labour lost more than 1,000 council seats in a savage wipeout.

Labour’s hegemony in Wales has been broken after more than a century, with the party losing its majority in the Senedd. The Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru came out on top with Reform UK in close pursuit, two parties representing a deep split in the country.

Meanwhile, the separatist Scottish National Party, which has been hit hard by scandals in recent years, revived its fortunes at Scottish Labour’s expense. By contrast, Reform UK didn’t win a single seat in Scotland.

The picture in England is much starker. Reform UK surged across much of the country, while the Greens recorded their best-ever local results, making significant gains in London and Manchester.

Election guru John Curtice has calculated Reform UK’s vote share at 26% – down from 30% in 2025 – whereas the Greens increased their vote share from 11% to 18% in a year. By contrast, Labour is down from 34% in 2024 to 20% in 2025, and now to 17% this year.

As these results unfortunately demonstrate, reactionary nationalism is strong in England, despite the Green surge. On the other hand, progressive cultural and civic nationalism outmatched British nationalism in Scotland and Wales.

But one thing is clear: whether Starmer is ousted or not, the Labour Party may be too far gone to save.

The Long Decline

Labour has been on this trajectory for 20 years, except for the blip in 2017, when it briefly looked as though a recovery was possible.

Considering how badly Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana botched the launch of a new left-wing party, the Greens are now the best hope for meaningful left-wing opposition.

Despite all odds, Zack Polanski is rapidly turning the Green Party into a viable party of government. Membership has exploded since Polanski took over, rising from over 50,000 in 2025, before he was elected, to around 230,000 today.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media has resorted to old tactics, smearing Polanski— a gay Jewish man—as an apologist for Antisemitism allied with Islamism.

This narrative emerged in response to the Green victory in Gorton and Denton, where Hannah Spencer won the support of a multiethnic working-class coalition. The right-wing press spun the result as a sectarian Islamic protest vote.

The establishment has dismissed the Green upsurge as an alliance between white progressive students with blue hair and Muslim blokes with beards who only care about Gaza. But in truth, the Green Party is expanding its reach to young working-class voters, especially routine workers.

The class dynamics of UK politics have changed. Trade unions are still in decline, with an increasingly elderly membership. This is why Labour has increasingly become a party of middle-class professionals and public sector workers.

Older voters are the core of the Reform UK right-wing coalition. Far-right politics are strongest among people aged 60 and above, whereas the right-wing youth vote is much smaller, more disparate and less likely to turn out.

The Farage Problem

Reform UK received fewer votes than in 2025.

Some of that has to do with the party accepting a swathe of high-profile Tories into its ranks. By importing most of the Johnson cabinet, Farage has undermined his own radical credibility among his activist base and even close supporters. This hurts Reform, even though Farage’s long-term mission was always a hostile takeover of the Conservative Party.

At the same time, Farage’s support for the war in Iran will soon become a liability. The fallout from that conflict will deliver a massive economic shock, driving up inflation and forcing interest rates higher, which will hit his suburban, homeowning base hard.

The tension within Faragism between radicalised Tories and far-right voters could derail Farage’s plans for power. Farage knows his best shot is a broader coalition bringing in as much of Middle England as possible.

Reform UK is also facing a challenger to its right: Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. The Lowe project has focused on consolidating its position in Great Yarmouth, but the aim is to capture Farage’s national vote share.

What’s missing from mainstream discourse about the rise of the far right today is the extent to which neoliberal centrism is merging with national populism. Both Farage and Lowe represent a fusion of conservative libertarianism and British nationalism.

There are two ways this could play out in the short term. Either Restore Britain serves as a significant rival, pushing Reform UK further rightwards, or Lowe’s party provides a pressure valve for Farage’s base and shores him up as a respectable centre-right politician.

Despite the challenges Farage is facing, Reform UK should not be underestimated. The party needs only 15% of the electorate to secure 25% of the vote with a 60% turnout. That is enough to take power under the first-past-the-post system.

Importantly, there isn’t enough space for two right-wing populist parties to compete for the Tory vote.

Lowe’s appeal is much narrower than Farage’s, because his radical demands are framed by white British nationalism. Yes, 36% of the public think you must be born British to be “truly British”, according to IPPR, but only 3% think you can’t be British if you’re black.

This should be good news for the Greens. If the right is split, the threshold they will need to surpass is lower. A Green wave could overtake Reform UK in three years, especially with a bump in voter turnout, but this will take a huge push from campaigners.

Farage may still end up as prime minister in a pact with the Tories in 2029. But the Green Party would be the official opposition after absorbing the Labour vote.

The Short Game

Although it’s not inevitable that Britain will elect a right-wing government in 2029, the left’s current prospects are bleak.

Labour’s implosion feels eerily similar to that of their traditional rivals, the Conservative Party, a few years back. Anyone counting on a return of the de facto two-party system that ruled the nation for a century had better think again.

That means that the Green Party is the only mainstream political force on the left capable of making the connection between climate breakdown, forever wars and the cost-of-living crisis.

A Green victory would probably be much more likely after five years of Farage trashing the country for his rich friends. This is hardly comforting news, however, given that the country is already facing a crisis on every front.

The English left hasn’t really got a choice in the short game. Either go Green and go all out to fight Reform UK or wait for the next decade of right-wing misrule.

This is the time to start campaigning, not packing up and going home.

Labour’s downfall is an opening for radical politics. But if the left doesn’t seize this opportunity, the right will do so, and it will wield power ruthlessly.

Photograph courtesy of Gage Skidmore. Published under a Creative Commons license.