‘A Total Collapse’: Elections May Expose Britain’s Fraying Political System

 

‘A Total Collapse’: Elections May Expose Britain’s Fraying Political System

 

Polls predict historic losses for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party on Thursday as anti-immigrant Reform U.K. makes gains, and a new era of multiparty politics takes shape.

 

Michael D. Shear Stephen Castle

By Michael D. Shear and Stephen Castle

Michael Shear reported from Dumbarton, Scotland, and from London. Stephen Castle reported from Tredegar, Wales.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/world/europe/uk-local-elections-2026-keir-starmer.html

May 7, 2026

Updated 9:48 a.m. ET

 

Dumbarton, a picturesque coastal town along the River Clyde near Glasgow, has been represented in the Scottish Parliament by Jackie Baillie, a Labour Party politician, since 1999.

 

Residents think this could be the week that changes.

 

“I’ve lost total faith in all the politicians,” Willie Henderson, 98, said on a recent day as he sat in a cafe in one of Dumbarton’s parks. “They all get in with good intentions, and then they just line their pockets. They’re on the gravy train.”

 

On Thursday, voters across Scotland and Wales will elect members of their national parliaments, while residents in many parts of England will choose members of local councils. Mr. Henderson, who worked for 30 years at the local whisky distillery, said he would likely vote for an independent candidate, even though his father was a lifelong Labour supporter.

 

“As long as I get blue skies and sunshine, I don’t care what the politicians do,” he said.

 

That sense of disaffection and frustration, especially with incumbent politicians, is rampant across Britain, opinion polls suggest, and will likely fuel an electoral disaster for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

 

By the time the ballots are all counted on Saturday, Mr. Starmer could be presiding over a party that has fallen to a distant third place — or lower — in thousands of local races.

 

“It is the total collapse of the traditional two-party system,” said Luke Tryl, executive director of the polling firm More in Common. “It is people saying, ‘I’m not happy with the status quo.’”

 

Mr. Starmer himself is not on the ballot, and a general election does not have to be held until 2029. But with surveys showing him as one of the least popular prime ministers in British history, Thursday’s voting is viewed as a referendum on his leadership.

 

In place of Labour and its traditional opponent, the Conservatives, many voters are embracing other parties in what experts say represents the largest transformation in British politics in a generation. The two biggest beneficiaries are Reform U.K., the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage, a supporter of President Trump, and — on the other side of the political spectrum — the leftist, pro-environment Green Party.

 

Polls suggest that the Conservative Party, known as the Tories, will continue to lose seats after cratering in local and national elections over the past two years. In some parts of Britain, the party once led by the “Iron Lady” of British politics, Margaret Thatcher, could come in fourth or fifth, with support in the single digits.

 

“It’s a fundamental rejection of the two main parties, but it has not come from nowhere,” said Prof. Jane Green, a political scientist at the University of Oxford. “One question is: Are we seeing something deeper than a protest vote against the two main parties? Have people gone past the point of no return?”

 

Mr. Farage predicts a historic surge in support for his anti-immigration party, which has led opinion polls for more than a year. Zack Polanski, a former hypnotherapist who became leader of the Greens in September, is hailing his party as a true home for disaffected Labour liberals. Other parties in Scotland, Wales and England are further fragmenting the electorate. (There is no voting in Northern Ireland this week.)

 

The predictions are so grim for Mr. Starmer that some rivals within Labour have been plotting possible challenges to his leadership for months.

 

Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics, said recently that he doubted whether Labour lawmakers would “get to such a fever pitch of dissent that they would trigger a leadership election.”

 

But he said that if the results of Thursday’s elections were “very, very bad, it might trigger somebody to decide there’s nothing left to lose.”

 

In Wales, ‘people are not happy with Labour’

 

In the past, “you could put a donkey up, put a red rosette on it and they would vote for it,” said Melvyn Williams, a retired steelworker and Labour supporter, referring to the Labour Party’s colors and the traditional loyalty of voters in this former mining and iron-working town.

 

Opinion polls suggest that voters in Wales are poised to deny Labour control of the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd, for the first time since Wales gained its own political assembly. The left wing Plaid Cymru (pronounced plide kum-ree), which favors independence for Wales, is vying for first place with Reform.

 

“It’s a Labour area, but people are not happy with Labour at the moment,” said Claire Markey, 53, who has run a hair salon in Tredegar for more than 18 years.

 

In the chair having a trim, David Jones, 83 and a retired miner, said he had voted Labour all his life. But this time he is backing Reform. Labour candidates, like other politicians, “promise the world and deliver nothing,” he said.

 

In his campaign office in Caerphilly, Llyr Powell, the area’s main Reform candidate, said, “This is the opportunity to defeat the Labour party now and set our mark.” Although the area has a relatively low foreign-born population, he cited immigration as a central issue. “People feel it and see it firsthand,” he said.

 

But the leaders of Plaid Cymru predict that Welsh voters will reject Reform.

 

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the party’s leader, said there was “deep disillusionment with Keir Starmer’s leadership” but also recognition that Reform’s populism is “a threat to Wales.” Delyth Jewell, a Plaid Cymru candidate, said many voters viewed Mr. Farage’s Reform as a party rooted in the English political system, not the Welsh one.

 

“They are horrified by that prospect of Reform,” she said.

 

A surge for Reform in England

England’s councils are the backbone of the country’s local government: They organize trash pickup, run libraries, fill potholes and more. To pay for all of that, councils receive some money from the central government, and collect a property tax from residents and businesses.

 

On Thursday, voters will choose council members in towns, rural village parishes and big-city boroughs. Of the 5,000 council seats up for election, 2,196 are currently held by Labour. Surveys suggest the party could lose three-quarters of them or more.

 

The issues driving those projected losses vary widely.

 

In some smaller towns far from London, concern about immigration appears to be helping Mr. Farage’s Reform party.

 

But in other places, including parts of central London, Mr. Polanski’s Green Party appears likely to make inroads with progressive voters. Many are frustrated with Mr. Starmer over his government’s centrist economic policies, its tough approach to immigration and its perceived lack of robust support for Palestinian rights.

 

Still other councils may be decided by concerns about policing and security. Mr. Tryl, the pollster, said that Reform candidates were campaigning heavily in some places by stoking fears of crime — although official data shows that most forms of crime have fallen in the past decade, and London’s homicide rate is at its lowest level since records began.

 

In Scotland, Labour’s decline helps a nationalist party

If Ms. Baillie, the longtime Scottish parliamentarian, loses in Dumbarton after representing the area for more than a quarter century, it would underline Labour’s decline in Scotland.

 

James Curry, 60, a social worker from Dumbarton, has in the past supported the Scottish National Party, which campaigns for independence from the United Kingdom and has led the Scottish Parliament for nearly 20 years. He said he was struggling to decide who to vote for.

 

“I just feel they’ve had their time in power, and I don’t know if they have honored their promises,” he said, citing concerns about Scotland’s National Health Service and education.

 

One thing he does know: He’s not voting for Reform.

 

“I don’t buy it,” Mr. Curry said, noting the group’s anti-immigration stance and reports of a homophobic joke made by the party’s leader in Scotland. “I think there’s too much baggage that goes with them.”

 

In Edinburgh, Lorna Jane Slater is running for the Green Party in a liberal part of the city. Pro-Palestinian fliers and environmental messages were plastered near the coffee shop where she sat for an interview earlier this month.

 

“It tends to be young people, well-educated people, people who rent, people who don’t own cars,” she said, describing the area where she lives. “They want better public transport. They want better cycling lanes.”

 

The S.N.P. has introduced popular policies like providing every expectant mother with a “baby box” containing clothes and other necessities. Students at Scottish universities get free tuition and ride buses for free.

 

But Ms. Slater said the increasing cost of living and declines in education and health care provision signaled the need for a new approach. And she is confident that voters will not embrace Labour.

 

“The pitch that Labour always had when the Tories were in power was: ‘Wait till Labour gets in and everything will be great,’” she said. “And it’s not great.”

 

Michael D. Shear is the chief U.K. correspondent for The New York Times, covering British politics and culture and diplomacy around the world.

 

Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.