As the sun came up on Friday, there was no question Britain was waking to a new dawn. And, hackneyed metaphors aside, it\u2019s a distinctly turquoise-coloured sunrise.<\/p>\n
Over the last few days, we have been told Britain is now a nation of five-party politics \u2013 but it felt more like one-party politics overnight as Nigel Farage<\/a>\u2019s Reform UK party battered all comers in Thursday’s local elections. As I write, Reform has won 348 seats, Labour has lost 248, and the Conservatives<\/a> are down 135.<\/p>\n We knew it was going to be a bloodbath, but the numbers are still remarkable. And they are impossible to ignore. They are a roar across the nation, saying \u201cgive us a general election\u201d.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s Northern heartlands, the famous Red Wall, became the Turquoise Wall as ward after Labour ward fell to Farage\u2019s party.<\/p>\n First, Labour lost control in Tameside, Angela Rayner<\/a>\u2019s backyard, then in Wigan, Lisa Nandy’s fiefdom, then Hartlepool, Lord Mandelson\u2019s old constituency. The Labour strongholds were crumbling minute by minute as Reform swept all before them.<\/p>\n This was not some half-hearted protest vote. It was a nation telling the sitting Government to get the hell out. A nation sick of seeing their country being run down, of working harder while feeling poorer, of watching unfairness prosper and the skivers rewarded, and of Britain\u2019s place in the world reduced further every day this witless self-harming Government is in power.<\/p>\n It is unequivocally a nation demanding a general election.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t want a change of leader \u2013 they want a wholesale change of Government.<\/p>\n They want a government that addresses their concerns, their hopes and their fears, not a government that simply virtue-signals to its own kind and serves the big unions.<\/p>\n