People walk past a polling station sign during the United Kingdom’s 2026 local elections in London on May 7, 2026. (Kin Cheung/AP)
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
Britain held its local elections Thursday, and one headline was the ascendency of Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform party over the traditional Conservatives. But the day hardly brought succor for the Labour Party; the traditional party of the left lost ground in key constituencies to the Green Party, historically a marginal entity in the United Kingdom but now the party of choice among 18-to-24-year-old voters.
Even Labour’s first minister of Wales, Baroness Morgan of Ely, lost her seat.
Beleaguered British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, meanwhile, was just about hanging on. To many minds, he is a dead man walking, soon to be abandoned by his Labour Party.
What is the takeaway? The results certainly look dismal for moderates of any persuasion; the Reform and Green supporters hate each other with a passion. They’re also a vote of no confidence in the legacy parties.
And they’re further evidence of how Britain, not unlike the U.S., is now deeply divided between the affluent, educated urbanites who embrace progressive ideals and government spending — in Chicago we’d call them lakefront liberals — and the population living in rural areas and hollowed-out factory towns who feel abandoned by the elite establishment, many of whom abhor Britain’s porous borders and lament what they see as an immigration-driven collapse of both social services and a traditional British life.
Age came into play, too. Despite a popular leader in Kemi Badenoch, the traditional Conservative Party increasingly is seen as a gerontocracy appealing only to the aged. Labour has some of the same problems, having lost a hefty chunk of its traditional working-class supporters. All of the energy is at their flanks.
Editorial continues here.