A dramatic victory in the Congressional special election. Hundreds of seats won in local governments in English. The taste of first power in the lower classes of government.
By earning widespread benefits from a series of local elections held in the UK on Thursday, Nigel Farage, one of President Trump's UK's most well-known supporters and leader of the anti-immigration reform British Party, has integrated his reputation as the country's most important political disruptor.
But he could have still done much bigger. It blew a hole into the country's two-party political system.
For almost all of the past century, British power has alternated between the governing Labour Party, now led by Kiel Prime Minister Stage, and the opposition Conservative Party, which chose its new leader, Kemi Badenok last year.
However, the second layer rarely seemed unstable as support for reform and profits for other smaller parties has surged.
Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said:
Conservatives who were still shaking after being kicked out of power last year suffered another disastrous outcome. The economy was flatline, and workers were punished by voters angry at the government spending curbs and higher taxes introduced since being led by the administration.
Electors rejected both major parties, Professor Ford added that this was the result of the general election.
Starmer's former policy director Claire Ainsley said the results also reflect long-term trends, including the collapse of traditional class loyalty among voters, an increase in nationalist politics, and increased support for centralized liberal Democrats, greens and independent candidates.
“We've seen fragmentation of society, but it flowed into our politics,” said Ainsley, who currently works in the UK for the Institute for Progressive Policy, a Washington-based research institute. “We currently have multi-party votes.”
The result is that both major political parties struggle as they find themselves competing not only with each other but with political left and right enemies.
That atmosphere of public disillusionment opened up to smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats, who won 163 council seats and Green, who won 44.
In an interview at the Reform UK rally in March, party supporter John McDermotorow said many people in the Stockton-on-Teas area in northeastern England felt that Labour had “grown away from working people.”
Regarding Farage, “He's very charismatic and communicates with people from all walks of life,” McDermottroe said.
Mr. Farage, including the mayor of the region known as the West of England, felt the unleashed fragmentation of British politics.
Labour's Helen Godwin won it with only a quarter of the votes, moving her slightly ahead of Reformed Britain, but even the fifth party won 14% of the votes.
Less than a third of eligible voters voted. This is the type of low voter turnout that is common in local elections. But that means Godwin was elected by just 7.5% of eligible voters, and Gavin Burwell, former Chief of Staff on Downing Street and a member of the Conservative Opposition, was pointed out on social media, adding that there is a “collapse” in the two-party political system.
That may still prove an exaggeration.
Due to the reorganization, the number of seats contested in Thursday's local elections is the lowest since 1975, and voter turnout is always low for such races.
The UK's next general election — when its proposition is properly tested — does not need to be held until 2029, and the previous challenges to the domination of two parties have faded.
Founded in the early 1980s by moderates disillusioned by the Labour Party, the Social Democrats promised to “break the mold” of British politics. In an alliance with another centralist party, opinion polls temporarily exceeded 50%. It proved a false dawn.
However, as five political parties currently compete for votes in two systems, British politics has become unpredictable.
Workers born from the union movement were once considered a working class party, with their centres being north and center of the country. Traditionally, conservatives represented the wealthy middle and middle classes, with support mainly concentrated in the South.
These loosening of bonds had already weakened the grip of the two major political parties. In last year's general election, total votes for labor and conservatives fell below 60% for the first time since before 1922, with workers landslide victory at around 34% of votes. In Scotland, the independent Scottish Nationalist Party formed politics.
Mr. Stage is currently facing a challenge. If workers have the right to appease Mr Farage's sympathizers, they risk losing support from liberal Democrats and progressive bases for Green.
Ainsley said workers face a “huge challenge” in the context of severely squeezing government spending, but added that it must focus on providing for voters who are still struggling with the jump in living expenses.
Conservatives face even greater threats from reform, as well as their own challenges. Tories need to recapture voters who have moved to Mr. Farage without moving the more liberal Tories into a centralized liberal Democrat, and so far without moving to the right.
Political scientists also say there is a shift ongoing that can change the fate of reform, and that can take what was the protest party and turn it into a force that can give good power to the ambition of replacing the Conservative Party as a major opposition party.
British parliamentary elections work under a system called the “first past,” in which the candidates with the most votes in each of the 650 constituencies are selected. Until now, it has usually been blessed with small parties.
“When Lib Dems were just trying to break two layers of workers, the rule of thumb was that they and their predecessors needed at least 30% to overcome bias inherent in the first past of the post,” wrote voting expert Peter Kellner.
The calculations are changing as more parties compete and there is no dominant force. “The party's turning point, such as reform, is no longer 30%, perhaps about 25%. That's where they stand in the poll,” he added.
Professor Ford said something fundamental has changed and he agreed that reforms “were done well enough to stop being an enemy past the post and become friends.”
Professor Ford said after the latest election results, “It's much easier for Nigel Farage to say, 'We're the real opposition party', and it's hard for people to laugh when people say it.”
