As Britain gets mired in small-party politics, Keir Starm…

The patron saint of small-party politics has been in town. Emmanuel Macron styles himself as the saviour of the established order against the many varieties of populist insurgent but, in the disguised monarchy of the French Fifth Republic, Macron was the man who invented his own party, En Marche, when the established political order collapsed. The revolution he embraced has crossed the Channel and Macron is here, to talk to the prime minister, the king and the president of Imperial College London, on a mission to help.

The transition from large-party to small-party politics will be slower in Britain than in France. The electoral system takes time to contort and accommodate a reality that is already present in the nation. A parliamentary system requires victory in 326 localities for power to be awarded, not just a single charismatic king-elect. But the change is coming and that’s why political readings have grown erratic. British politics is not yet in a state of equilibrium, still less in a state of grace. It is in a state of confusion.

No party is at all close to commanding the nation. Labour and the Conservatives have just 40% between them. But, for all the attention lavished on Reform UK, it is polling 26%, the same as the combined Liberal Democrat and Green vote. The overwhelming sense is volatility rooted in a desperate lack of conviction. When asked by YouGov who they expect to be prime minister after the next election, 40% of people didn’t know. When asked which party is setting the political terms, another 40% said they didn’t know.

The slow dissolve of Labour and Tory was dramatised last week by Jake Berry and Zarah Sultana, who between them make up the high-end muesli that British politics has become. Berry enjoyed five minutes of near-fame as the chair of the Conservative party under Liz Truss but has now thrown in his party card and joined Reform, which, in his grandiose estimation, now offers the only chance for Britain to recover its status as a great nation. The Conservative party can withstand the loss of Berry but more will defect. Riper fruit, as it were.

The decline of the Conservative party is a consummation that has been devoutly wished on the left of British politics for a long time and may be just as devoutly regretted once it happens. Into the space once occupied by Tories will slide something worse, probably led by Robert Jenrick. One of the jobs of the Tory party is to contain the noxious right. As someone who will never support it, this is what I expect the Conservative party to do for me.

The Labour party is supposed to do the same on the left but it is cracking too. The former Labour MP for Coventry South Zarah Sultana and the party’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn will offer a place for the Labour left to go, and 18% of British people say they are at least open to voting for it, including a third of all 2024 Labour voters. The new Corbyn party will also be competing with the Greens, but watch out for a surprising tactical shift.

A Corbyn-led party will be seen as one possible repository of protest, and an important fraction of the Reform vote simply wants to signal its displeasure by voting for a no-hoper. The far left can therefore be a useful ally on the ticket when Labour is taking on Reform. Indeed, 11% of people who told YouGov they were likely to consider voting for a Corbyn-led party said they were also open to voting for Reform.

There is no point disdaining Corbyn’s new political party. Small-party politics has large causes. Democracies are supposed to offer a chance to take part and the prospect of material improvement. From the 2008 financial crash through Brexit in 2016 and the pandemic in 2020, the average British household has seen material decline, in which circumstances the chance to take part seems hollow. Better to shake the whole thing up.

In Britain the shake-up is causing a confused mess that will have to be settled after a general election. Small-party politics will lead to coalition politics. The public has yet to fully comprehend the implications of its own rupture but the prospect of various coalitions is beginning to gain traction. This will become the conversation of British politics in the second half of this parliamentary term.

Already, more than a quarter of the country support a coalition between Reform and the Tories, which includes more than half of all those who vote for either party. Conservative voters would be just as happy with another coalition with the Liberal Democrats, although this view is absolutely not reciprocated. Labour supporters are surprisingly keen on a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and inveterately hostile to a deal with Reform. The really fun option is the grand coalition – Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat – and, as outlandish as it sounds, that is an option to watch, perhaps not under the current leaders but in time to come.

The only way to avoid this conversation is for a small party to get big again. At his joint press conference with President Macron, Keir Starmer said the right thing: “We have to show that pragmatic politics is the way to deliver the results that matter.” The prime minister also did the right thing, with an immigration deal. That is the privilege, as well as the responsibility, of government. To choose, to act, to be as big as possible while the walls of politics are coming in.

For the moment, we are caught betwixt and between, with legacy parties that too few people want, which nobody would now invent but which are doomed to live on as best they can. We need them to manage the change.

Antonio Gramsci put it best: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters”.

Photograph by Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty