But British politics is never going to be the same again, Martin Jay writes. Junte-se a nós no Telegram , Twitter e VK . Escreva para nós: info@strategic-culture.su Farage’s win in local elections seems to have projected him towards becoming the next PM in the UK. But the two-party system is not going to be scrapped; it has just been replaced by two groups of rainbow coalitions – although there is plenty of time for Farage to drown himself in graft. British politics is never going to be the same again after Nigel Farage’s far-right party, Reform UK, scooped the lion’s share of local election seats on May 8th. While many political pundits now conclude that Farage is destined to become the next Prime Minister, it is also worth noting that the voting system will have to be rejigged before the next general election, as six parties are now running. The days of the two-party race, which British commentators call “first past the post”, are outdated, and there will now be a debate about changing the system to a proportional representation system which, ironically, propelled Farage through well over twenty years in the EU system, as his party benefitted enormously from it.
What many analysts are now predicting is that the next elections in the UK will group Reform UK and the Conservatives as one pact in a coalition versus Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens on the other side. But the euphoria of the landslide victory for Reform has pushed many mainstream commentators to conclude that one way or another – even perhaps through getting a majority of seats in the House of Commons (highly unlikely) – Farage will be the next British PM.
His agenda will be business- and elite-friendly, but largely this is a populist leader who few want to admit will be elected on one policy promise: deporting millions of asylum seekers back to their country of origin. Arguably this would take the strain off the national budget, as currently there are 1.5 million who claim benefits, but there is also the subject of free housing, which is becoming more and more an incendiary subject among disenfranchised whites in northern cities. Mass migration has simply got out of hand in the UK, with hundreds of young men arriving on the south coast in boats from France who all seem to come with similar profiles: all unmarried men from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and sub-Saharan Africa who do not have passports but do arrive with the latest smartphones. White unemployed people in the UK, in particular in the north, are sick of seeing these people granted free housing and cash while a small percentage of them achieve social-media notoriety by breaking laws, even raping women, which has also created a lot of anger as it has thrown a light on a two-tiered legal system that favours them over the locals.
But can Farage even pull it off? Can he really deport a considerable number of these young men who are not fleeing prosecution but are just looking for a welfare-state free ticket and are eroding many of the core values of British society? And even if he can, will he? Farage’s track record of constantly flip-flopping on his own core policies is a legend in itself, so voters who want to see the mass deportations may well be disappointed given a revealing interview that constantly haunts Farage in which he dismisses the idea of mass deportations. In either case, he will need parliamentary backing and so many hurdles to jump just to pull off the main policy on which most Britons will vote him in.
Yet there is another scenario which the author favours, which is that the local elections vote on May 8th was a massive protest vote against the two mainstream parties – disgruntled swing voters who left their Conservative camp and voted Labour last time round, and grassroots Labour voters. Both Labour and the Conservatives took a massive beating, but it might be indulgent and wishful thinking that the local election vote will be mirrored on a national level in three years’ time, as it is worth noting that the previous protest vote that Brits were used to for decades – EU elections, which lifted Farage and his party into national politics through such tactical voting against mainstream parties – are no longer there. And so local elections may well have taken their role, and many voters who will stick with one mainstream party or another have used them to play a wild card to send a signal of their disappointment. Brits traditionally usually vote with mainstream parties even though, leading up to elections, they voice a sympathetic note to fringe players, and it is more likely that many angry Conservative and Labour voters are still going to vote with the idea of ‘stick with the devil you know’ when they head to the polls in three years’ time. Under this scenario, Reform will perhaps win around 100 seats in an assembly made up of 650 seats. Under this scenario, Farage might have real problems forming a coalition with a partner, as a gang mentality made up of the rest of the parliamentary makeup will kick in.
Another factor that should be considered is that there is plenty of time for Farage to royally screw things up and shoot himself in the foot with scandals, flip-flopping on policy, and corruption scandals. A recent donation of five million pounds by a crypto billionaire has thrown a shadow over Farage as people in the UK realise that he is in politics merely for financial gain. In a nutshell, Farage is coin-operated and forms policies around the latest donors’ personal bungs, which will not sit well with the British public when they come to vote on a national level. Local elections are all about messages to the mainstream parties, but they do not necessarily reflect what will happen on a national level. The “historic shift” that Farage talks about with regard to the local elections is true. But it is still too early to really imagine that Farage is going to become PM for a host of reasons, but largely because a huge question still remains over whether the Conservatives would form a coalition with him or draw a line in the sand early on and rule it out. The spotlight is actually now on Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who will come under more pressure to shift more to the right. If she does not and cannot outrule a coalition, then the likelihood is that the two-party system will more or less stay in place, but modified into a two-group system. The choice for voters will actually be more polarised than ever.