Is the two party system now dead in Britain?

The above statement has been tried out many times over the last decade and a half, only to fall flat on its face eventually. During the 2010 general election campaign, a strong performance from Nick Clegg in the leaders’ debates managed to propel the Lib Dems into first place in the polls - during a general election campaign, to remind you, so when it really matters. Talk was rife of the Liberal Democrats replacing Labour as the main rivals to the Conservatives, or some sort of hung parliament that was extremely messy in which no party had shown themselves to be definitively above the fray.

In the end, the Lib Dems lost five seats. We did get a hung parliament, albeit with the Tories as the clear frontrunners. We got five years of the coalition, at the end of which, predictably in retrospect, the Lib Dems were destroyed. The two-party system had hung on, at least for the time being.

At the next general election, held only two years later, Labour and the Tories got the highest collective vote share in ages. Everyone coalesced around the two main parties, to a large degree because of Brexit. The two-party system seemed stronger than ever, all of a sudden. Perhaps the whole “Cleggmania” thing had been a mere blip and the natural order was reasserting itself. Under First Past the Post, Britain would always gravitate back towards Labour and the Conservatives.

Yet here we are again. An unpopular Labour government and an even more unpopular Tory opposition have just been buried in a set of local and mayoral elections. Mostly by Reform, the latest project from Nigel Farage, the man who has done more to endanger the two-party system than anyone else in the country. But also the Lib Dems seem to continue to find a niche, eating away at disaffected voters from both parties.

The two-party system seems more imperilled than it ever has before. In the video above, I go into greater detail about where I see this going - and what I think both Labour and the Tories, exploring each party separately, can do to arrest the trend. Please give it a watch - and like and subscribe to the YouTube channel, both help a great deal. Thanks for reading and listening.