Abstract
At the last Capital & Class editorial board meeting of 2025, editor, Owen Worth, suggested publishing a forum of analysis on the results of the forthcoming Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections along with those of the results of the council elections in England. The rationale was that major political mood changes were afoot, and these would be confirmed by the popular votes in three of the four nations of the United Kingdom (UK). The background was not just the ‘loveless landslide’ of the Keir Starmer led Labour Party at the general election on 4 July 2024 but that the Labour ‘Change Begins’ campaign slogan never manifested itself in the anticipated progress and the popular mood consequently reflected the disappointment and disillusionment at this. In UK wide polling, from May 2024 and bar just one poll, Labour never again commanded the most support, with that accolade going to Reform UK. The aforementioned 7 May 2026 elections would be a testing ground for these political trajectories for polls only ask a limited sample of people who they would vote on the day of being questioned if a hypothetical general election was to be held that day. In the background, the Green Party of England and Wales was making waves under its new eco-populist leader, Zack Polanski. Its party membership had swollen from some 60,000 before Polanski’s election in the autumn of 2025 to the leadership to 230,000 just before 7 May 2026. Its victory in the Gorton and Denton Westminster parliamentary by-election of 26 February 2026 confirmed that left-wing voters were increasingly turning to the Greens in England. This development simultaneously benefitted from and massively overshadowed the shambles of the Your Party party led by Jeremy Corbyn. It saw some 800,000 people registering an interest in knowing more about the party in the summer of 2025 but led to just 60,000 joining by the time of the party’s founding conference in November 2025, with this number declining ever further into 2026 as Your Party’s leadership chose ‘by hook and by crook’ in a faction fight effectively to not stand its own candidates on 7 May 2026. Outside of parliamentary politics, the racist right continues to rise, with Restore Britain being the ‘new kid on the block’ as it seeks to congeal the far right into an electoral force in order to give expression to those angered by Reform UK’s unwillingness to espouse the policy of mass remigration (formerly known as deportation and expulsion). All in all, politics in Britain is at another fork in the road with the tectonic plates moving again and possibly further apart. Despite losing the three by-elections (Caerphilly, Gorton and Denton, Makerfield) in a row and Farage’s leadership coming under further scrutiny as a result of his personal financial affairs, Reform UK is the major disrupter. Another is the possible alliance of the (devolved) Celtic nations against the Westminster polity. A third is the Green Party of England and Wales. Whether Andy Burnham becomes another remains to be seen but the odds do not look convincing as he is from the soft left Labourist stable. The socialist left continues to languish in a morass of problems largely of its own making. No doubt future content in Capital & Class will reflect on these further, future developments. In the meantime, we present the three analyses by Gall (Scotland), Gilbert (England) and Worth (Wales).