From Nigel Farage to Zack Polanski – anyone could be our next Prime Minister ...Middle East

There was a time when more than nine in 10 people would vote for one of the two main parties at a general election. As recently as 2017, the Conservatives and Labour attracted 82.3 per cent of all votes.

Now, according to The i Paper‘s most recent poll, just 42 per cent of public would vote either Tory or Labour.

If you listen to Reform UK, the reason for this is clear: they are replacing the Conservatives as the dominant party of the right. On that logic, Britain may be moving from one two-party system to another, just as happened a century ago when Labour first eclipsed the Liberals.

But hold on a minute. Yes, Reform are in the lead, and have been in every poll for months now – but their lead is hardly commanding. Our poll put Nigel Farage’s party on 30 per cent, a level of support which has never in history been good enough to win an election.

And there is another factor. The Greens are surging, up to 12 per cent in our survey and higher in some others. Not forgetting the Liberal Democrats, who hold 72 seats in the House of Commons – or the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, both hoping to surf the wave of anti-Labour sentiment.

It looks like two-party politics is dead. The fact that no party can beat 30 per cent suggests voters are less willing to compromise, keen to find a political identity that fits their views as precisely as possible.

We have been here before; that 2017 result came after a string of general elections in which the combined Labour-Tory vote share had sagged. But there are reasons to believe that this time will be different.

The rise of social media, which sorts voters into information bubbles, and the fact that similar trends have taken hold all across Europe, suggest that a return to a straightforward red-blue split is not likely any time soon.

That leaves the next general election, still more than three years away, as wide open as any in memory. There are plausible paths to victory for at least half a dozen would-be prime ministers.

Speak to Farage, and the election is a done deal: he tells everyone who will listen that Reform will win the election, and is already prioritising its preparation for government. This would be a monumental achievement, to go from just five Commons seats to at least 320 – but it is clearly possible.

If Reform continues to lead the polls, and if Labour’s plans to grow the economy, boost public services and cut immigration do not succeed, then those right-of-centre voters (and MPs) still loyal to the Tories may well conclude that Farage is their best bet of defeating the left. And if Reform can convince people who do not normally vote that they are genuinely doing politics differently, this disaffected bloc could prove the difference.

How, then, could Labour claw things back? There are two ways. The first is for Sir Keir Starmer, perhaps boosted by a pick-up in growth and falling migrant numbers, to consolidate the anti-Reform vote – still a large majority of the population – in a campaign showing the same sort of effective regional targeting that gave the Prime Minister his huge majority last year.

The other is by changing leader: Starmer is so unpopular that many in Labour fear a turnaround is now impossible on his watch. In this scenario, a new premier – either a punchy centrist like Wes Streeting, or a strident left-winger such as Angela Rayner – carries out a successful reset after Starmer is toppled, uniting the anti-Farage forces and seeing off the threat from the Greens.

But there is more. The Tories are on the rise in the polls after a year of political stagnation, and Kemi Badenoch is now seen by her colleagues as a genuine contender for prime minister for the first time. Their best bet is that the economy becomes the battleground again, providing an opening for the party that has prioritised economic prudence over tax-and-spend.

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Could there be an even more rogue outcome? Zack Polanski, the Greens’ new leader, dreams of emulating Farage by doing on the left what Reform has done on the right. If Labour’s popularity sinks further, it is not quite beyond the realms of imagination that the Greens could end up as the main force for progressive voters.

That just leaves Sir Ed Davey – OK, not as prime minister, but perhaps as a deputy PM in a centre-left coalition?

All of this is possible. None of it is inevitable. Do not believe anyone who tells you they know what will happen at the next election. In this age of uncertainty, there is still all to play for.

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