Elections in England, Scotland and Wales

Talk to the Webinar organized by the International Manifesto Group on the them “Crisis of Britain’s politics deepens.

10 May 2026.

Thank you, Alan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping often says that we are currently experiencing changes unseen in a century.

When he advanced this proposition, I somehow doubt that local elections in England and to the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales were uppermost in his mind. Nevertheless, his formulation fits rather perfectly.

For the last century, British politics has essentially been a two-party affair. Of course, there were numerous other parties, but in terms of who would constitute the government there were really just two that mattered. In fact, this situation had pertained for considerably longer. The major change that occurred a century ago was that the old Liberal party was supplanted by Labour as the country’s second party, the Tories being considered by the ruling class, and evidently much of the electorate, as the supposed ‘natural party of government’.

To grasp the scale of the changes currently unfolding, it’s worth noting that as recently as the 2017 general election, the combined vote share of Conservative and Labour was 82.2%. In the 2019 general election, it was 75.7%.

In both cases, the Liberal Democrats were a distant third on a bit over 7%.

Just a few years later, we see a definitive end to two party politics. We now have five party politics in England and six party politics in both Scotland and Wales.

But nor is this all. We are witnessing the possible simultaneous and terminal decline of what have been the two main political parties for the last century. In the case of the Conservatives for nearly two centuries. This is a truly unprecedented development in British political history.

What should be the framework from which we seek to analyse and respond to these developments?

I’d argue that we could do a lot worse than proceed from the standpoint set out by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto in 1848 that:

“They [the communists] have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”

Moreover, even in these early days when the key task was to establish and articulate the independent role and position of the proletariat, one chapter of this short text was devoted to the ‘Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties’. Before outlining the support that the communists should extend to parties not forming part of the working class movement in France, Switzerland, Poland and Germany, Marx and Engels wrote:

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”

They make it clear that such support is by no means unqualified but conclude that the communists, “labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.”

These observations, I would argue, provide a valuable guideline with regards to parties not forming part of the working class movement, at least as historically constituted and traditionally understood, particularly in this case, the Green Party, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.

As an inevitable, and for us central, part of the changes unseen in a century now unfolding in British politics, we are presently in a complex period of a recomposition of the working class movement. And this in turn is impacted by a number of other historic changes, all of which are of course, inter-related, not least:

• A degree of fluidity as to what exactly constitutes and what we mean by the working class movement.
• The changing nature and composition of the working class itself and its relationship to other classes and strata; and the need to achieve clarity on this.
• And by no means least the nature of the relationship between the class struggle and the national question and the relative importance and centrality of both. The relevance of this to Scotland and Wales, and above all to the north of Ireland, should surely be clear to all by now, although sadly that is still not always the case. But, in a different form obviously, it also has resonance in Oldham, Birmingham and Leicester; in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Redbridge; in all those places where independent, pro-Gaza MPs were elected in the 2024 general election and where community independents and local parties are now taking seats and even control of local councils from Labour.

As of now, the Green Party has clearly established itself as the principal challenger to the left of Labour in England. One can say that it has largely become the voice for the 800,000 people who a year ago expressed interest in a new left party, but who were almost criminally let down by the factional strife that has largely stymied Your Party.

In contrast, Zack Polanski has shown himself to be a formidable political operator. And so it is not surprising that the ruling class is increasingly turning its guns on him, in a manner uncannily similar to the way they set out to destroy Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership of the Labour Party.

We therefore have a situation where the only Jewish leader of a significant political party in the UK is being lined up as the next victim of an anti-semitism scam, in Zack’s case not least by the same newspapers that also pillory him in cartoons that seek to depict him using actual anti-semitic tropes that would not have been out of place in the 1930s.

We cannot say that this is having no impact. But it is surely mitigated by the two and a half years of pitiless, unrelenting genocide in Gaza along with the daily atrocities in the West Bank and in Lebanon and against Iran. Starmer is surely and rightly paying a far greater price for his complicity in genocide.

It is hopefully not to have illusions in the Green Party, or any excessive confidence with regard to their possible future trajectory, to say that at the present time the left needs to overcome any residual sectarianism towards the Greens.

We are told that they are liberals. Maybe so. But when faced with an authoritarian government engaged in a process of creeping fascism is that an unmitigatedly bad thing?

We are told that the Greens are not part of the working class movement. As I have already suggested, this itself is a fluid and changing, not a static and absolute, question. It appears to be largely predicated here on links – or lack of them – to the trade unions.

However, this is something that the Polanski leadership is making a reasonably serious attempt to address. Besides, the more salient question is surely why do so many of the trade unions, who are supposed to represent the working class, stick with this anti-working class Labour government. Or LINO government – Labour in name only.

We also need to keep the question of the relationship between trade unions and the working class under review. Taking trade union membership as being membership of a union affiliated to the TUC, this peaked in 1979 at 13 million. It is now about 5.5 million. The majority of workers in Britain are not organised in a trade union. And, of those who are, as, for example, turnouts in postal ballots for union leaderships show, the level of participation is pitifully low. Trade union membership is also increasingly concentrated in the public sector rather than in the private sector and in industry.

None of this is said to gloat – it is certainly not a good thing – but simply to seek truth from facts.

The decline in the strength and power of the trade unions is not simply a result of the anti-trade union legislation and other attacks on the working class, that began in earnest under Margaret Thatcher, as crucial as these are, but also of the partially related  question of the changing composition and nature of the working class itself, as shown for example in:

• The rise of the ‘gig economy’ and the resulting ‘precariat’.
• The ‘work from home’ phenomenon, enabled by technological developments and accelerated by the COVID pandemic.
• The changing balance between mental and manual labour and the gradual blurring of lines between the two.

All these present challenges but ultimately mean that the overall ranks of the working class are increasing and also posit the necessity and possibility of greater unity between the working class and other sections of the people. As some commentators have already noted, the greatest gains made by the Greens on May 7 were in areas where the population consists of young, socially liberal professionals alongside a multinational – or as they generally prefer to say multicultural – working class. Hackney and Lambeth are good examples.

The other key factor, again as I’ve mentioned, is the national question.

The north of Ireland, Scotland and Wales will now, for the first time, all be led by parties at least nominally committed to separation from the UK and therefore inevitably to the end of the UK itself as historically and presently constituted. With all that that entails for Britain’s nuclear weapons – presently housed in an unwilling Scotland – and possibly on Britain’s place on the UN Security Council and so on. It is therefore a potentially existential question – far more serious than the Greens possibly supplanting Labour, as important as that is.

And it is precisely for this reason that the ruling class will fight it tooth and nail. An emerging contradiction between the democratically expressed will of the people and the reality of a forced and therefore undemocratic union is one fraught with revolutionary potential.

However, all these questions are, of course, unfolding against the very real threat posed by the rise of the far right, with the equally real threat of a Reform government if the working class and people’s movements do not get their act together. As welcome as the Green surge is, on May 7, Reform won 1,445 council seats, an increase of 1,443. The Greens won 525, an increase of 382.

The situation therefore demands that all working class, popular and democratic forces work to form a united front – whether in organisational form or de facto, but most likely combining elements of both, including with regard to local circumstances and possibilities.

This would require a measure of agreement on a limited and realistic number of key issues whilst also allowing for every political party and trend in the working class and progressive movements to put their own perspectives and program before the working class and people. Although time does not allow for elaboration on this, it will also necessitate careful, realistic and perhaps magnanimous consideration of trends in the Labour Party. Starmer’s days in office are clearly numbered. Whether or not his replacement can represent some sort of progress will depend not least on the extent to which left and progressive forces can influence and shift the overall centre of political gravity.

But one thing is for certain. A government that is complicit in and enables genocide. That appears almost insanely set on a quite possibly nuclear war with Russia. That has attacked some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society with apparently sadistic glee. That foments racism at every opportunity. That is engaged in an onslaught on democratic rights and is embarking on a program of creeping fascism. That seeks to legislate tomorrow what Nigel Farage proposes today. Such a government is part of the problem not part of the solution. If sections of the working class are falling for the odious snake oil of Reform, we can only deal with this by placing the blame where it belongs – squarely at the door of 10 Downing Street.