“We now have a new fuel in our rocket engine: GIRL POWER,” the Reform UK MP James McMurdock posted on X as the election results trickled through  Friday morning.

Nigel Farage’s party has its first female MP, Sarah Pochin, who won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, and the former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns was elected Greater Lincolnshire mayor as the “bad boys of Brexit” turned into a serious electoral force. Reform is no longer the party of old white men.

This demographic breakthrough suggests that last week’s results may represent a permanent shift in the political landscape that requires a different response from Labour and the Tories.

For years, Farage’s support base has been heavily male, Brexit supporting, hostile to immigration, sceptical about tackling climate change and ferociously “anti-woke”. The party’s new voters are more female, less ideological and worried about energy bills rather than Europe.

Since the general election, support for Reform has almost doubled among gen X women aged 45 to 60. Last July, 16% of this group backed Farage – now it is almost a third, according to analysis by the pollsters More in Common. Reform is the most popular choice for gen X women. Across all age groups, the proportion of female voters who support Farage’s party has gone up nine points.

Attention has focused on the young men turning to the right, attracted by Farage’s laddish TikTok videos, but there has been an equally dramatic shift among middle-aged female voters. In Runcorn, Pochin, who is a magistrate, built her campaign around “family, community and country” – a message deliberately designed to appeal to women like her.

These new Reform supporters are culturally and politically different from the old ones, polling and focus groups have shown. They agree with the traditional Faragistes that “Britain’s best years are behind us” but they are more likely to say that the advancement of women in public life has been good for society and they are less likely to think the net zero target is a bad policy.

Instead of obsessing about the European Court of Human Rights, they care about the NHS. Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, says Reform’s supporters now look “less like an ideologically cohesive block and more like a disillusioned broad church”.

Farage is benefiting from a grand coalition of the thoroughly pissed off.

Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister and Reform’s justice spokesperson, says the shift was evident on the campaign trail. “The image we have is of a certain type of male supporting us, but it doesn’t matter who you talk to – whether it’s the working man, the stay-at-home wife or the young professional: they can’t get a doctor’s appointment.

“They are cheesed off with the Conservative party for leaving behind an unholy mess. They voted Labour in the hope they would be the champion of public services, but if anything, things have got worse.”

The Farage “rip tide” is already dragging Labour and the Conservatives to the right as Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch compete to talk tough on immigration, welfare and crime.

‘Cheesed off with the Tories, they voted Labour, but things have got worse’

Ann Widdecombe, Reform justice spokesperson

But this misunderstands the changing identity and motivation of those switching to Reform, say analysts. The elections this week were far more a rejection of the party duopoly that has dominated in Westminster for decades than they were an endorsement of any policies promoted by Farage. An Opinium poll for The Observer found that Reform has net negative ratings on almost all issues apart from immigration. Its success derives from the electorate’s loss of trust in Labour and the Conservatives.

As the old class-based allegiances and tribal loyalties evaporate, the era of two-party politics appears to be over. According to a BBC projection, on the basis of last week’s results, Labour and the Tories would between them have only 35% of the vote in a general election. For the first time the Liberal Democrats beat both the Conservatives and Labour in a round of local elections and now control more councils than the Tories. The Greens and Gaza independents are snapping at Labour’s heels.

Nicky Morgan, the former Tory cabinet minister, insists it would be foolish for Badenoch to try and head off the Reform threat by aping Farage. “If you are very shrill on issues like immigration, you put off more people than you gain,” she says. “Nigel Farage has been very clear he wants the destruction of the Conservative party. Anyone who says we need some sort of deal with Reform is making it easier for him to achieve that aim.”

For Starmer the danger of pandering to a rightwing agenda is just as great. Since the election, the party has lost more than three times as many voters to the Lib Dems as to Reform. The defection of female gen X voters to Farage’s party is mirrored by a drift to the Greens among gen Z women aged 18 to 28.

Downing Street has identified a group of target voters who have switched from Labour to other parties. Those who have gone to the centrist pro-European Lib Dems are virtually indistinguishable from those who moved to the rightwing Eurosceptic Reform. These “Venn diagram voters” have more in common with each other than they do with traditional voters in their new political homes on left and right.

All are most concerned about the cost of living and the NHS. To the extent they care about immigration, it is because they feel that successive governments have lost control, rather than because they are hostile to foreigners. “If you get a room full of gettable Labour voters and ask them about their top two or three issues, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between those who have switched to Reform and those who have gone to the Lib Dems,” one strategist says.

With voters impatient for results, the worst thing for all parties would be to talk tough on immigration but not deliver. Labour MPs say the issue that came up the most on the doorstep in the run-up to last week’s elections was the cut in the winter fuel allowance. That was, says one senior figure, the government’s “original sin”.

David Blunkett, the former Labour cabinet minister, believes the prime minister urgently needs a new approach. “Labour is doing extremely well on international policy, but nobody votes on foreign affairs,” he says. “The Treasury has bound Labour in on monetarist policy, but the bond markets don’t have a vote. The challenge is more than just communication. It is about visible delivery where each announcement is related to the locality in which people live. You’re building more houses, but what does that mean here? Persuade me that net zero is not going to damage either the family income or access to alternatives to electricity.”

Having taken control of 10 local authorities and won two mayoralties, Farage and his party are for the first time the incumbents rather than insurgents. Analysis by Labour Together found Reform now controls £10.1bn of public money. Jonathan Ashworth, the CEO, says: “There is now no hiding place for Nigel Farage.” The risk for Labour though is that Reform will claim credit for local successes and blame central government for any problems, as the Scottish National Party has done north of the border.

Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former head of policy, who is directing a project on renewal of the centre left for the US-based Public Policy Institute, says: “The political choice for Labour is less about leaning right vs left and more about how to demonstrate the change people voted for. That has to include gripping immigration, but in the end it comes down to making people feel better off and improving people’s experience of public services.”

Senior Labour figures recently met one of the few people worldwide who has bucked the populist trend. Martin Engell-Rossen, the former chief of staff to the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, helped the centre-left Social Democrats to win and then retain power. His advice was not to emulate Farage but focus on reforms that will benefit ordinary people who play by the rules. In Denmark he installed a white board which maps out the government’s goals, with red green and amber magnets keeping track of how well the Social Democrats were performing against their core policies. Government, he warned, can become a conspiracy of distractions and it is essential to keep driving forward to make a practical difference in voters’ lives.

Starmer won last year’s general election with a one-word slogan: “Change”. People will keep voting for change until they believe they have got it. “The overwhelming mood in the country is one of disillusionment with politics,” one cabinet minister says. “I’m not sure we’re doing enough to counter that.”