Brexit was a shot heard ’round the world a decade ago next month, when the British voted to reject the recommendation of their political, economic and cultural establishment and leave the European Union. Its global significance was its loud expression of deep disaffection with the self-satisfied, self-serving elites in Western democracies who dictated the boundaries of acceptable debate on immigration, national sovereignty, the globalized economy and the modern gospel of cultural progressivism. It echoed with thunderous effect across the Atlantic a few months later, when Donald Trump rode similar discontent to the White House.
A decade on, the political instability, economic malaise and social disorder that are the hallmarks of modern Britain have led many—even some of those who discharged the weapon—to conclude that the target of that shot might have been their own foot. But last week’s local elections across the country, a kind of national midterm, indicated that the revolutionary spirit is as vibrant as ever and, if anything, intensifying and spreading. The ascendant forces are populist nationalism and a more radical progressivism that has risen to challenge it. Like Brexit, the mood there could presage similar developments in politics here.
The results confirmed that Keir Starmer, the Labour prime minister elected less than two years ago with a landslide—in parliamentary seats, but not votes—is about as popular as a hantavirus patient on a cruise. Labour hit historic lows in the popular vote—barely 1 in six 6 backed the party. Across England, cities and towns that had never known anything but Labour rule fell on one side to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and on the other to a Green Party whose core message is that Labour is insufficiently radical. Wales, Labour’s historic redoubt, fell to Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, with Mr. Farage’s Reform UK running second. The Scottish National Party won again, with Labour barely holding on to a distant second place in Scotland.
Mr. Farage—Donald Trump’s favorite nonroyal Brit—advanced almost everywhere and is on course to be prime minister after the next general election, in two or three years. Analysis by Focaldata, a polling firm, suggests an election based on last week’s results (not all parts of the country voted) would see Reform at 28%, the Conservatives, the once dominant right-of-center party, at 20%, Labour at 18%, the Greens at 17% and the left-leaning Liberal Democrats at 14%.
The results portray an unprecedented political fragmentation: five parties competing in England, with differing strengths in different regions, plus the nationalist parties in the smaller nations. It results in the curious and unhealthy reality that, thanks to the vagaries of the electoral system, Labour and the Tories combined have 80% of seats in Parliament but command the support of little more than a third of the British public. The daily back-and-forth of national politics and government is conducted by politicians widely rejected by voters.
Laid bare again is the sulfurous discontent not only with traditional parties, but with an entire democratic system voters feel is failing them. Support for the center-right and center-left parties has collapsed amid demands for radical alternatives.
Mr. Farage’s voters—and plenty of others—are angry with failed efforts to stop illegal immigration, the advance of multiculturalism and elite deprecation of traditional values, and an economy viewed as opportunityless for the many in an age of rapid technological change.
The national conservatism his movement represents has sparked its own backlash: a chic radicalism of the latte-sipping classes with their climate alarmism, demand for a return to the EU, and solidarity with Palestinians who seek to destroy Israel.
The surging Greens have made opposition to Israel a core part of their platform. Their leader, Zack Polanski, who is Jewish but passionately anti-Zionist, has called the wars in Gaza and Lebanon “genocide.” His party was belatedly forced to withdraw candidates with a history of antisemitic social-media posts. Among the first words out of the mouth of the new Green mayor of Lewisham in southeast London, where the party ousted Labour after 55 years in power, was a call for the borough to seek a “twinning” arrangement (a sister-city designation) with “a Palestinian town.”
This polarization is on display elsewhere. If Mr. Starmer is toppled as a result of the Labour disaster, which seems increasingly probable, his successor is likely to be from the left of the party, which demands even higher taxes on the rich and more welfare spending.
The U.S. has a singular political culture, and not all these trends are replicated here. There is unlikely to be a serious third party, much less a fourth or fifth. But the larger political dynamic is trans-Atlantic and global. Mr. Trump may not be popular in Britain, but Trumpism and its rejection of old liberal democratic orthodoxies is rapidly gaining ground on the right.
In Britain, as in the U.S., the response is centrifugal: The left isn’t reaching for the diminishing middle ground but seeking expanded territory on the more radical extreme. The old politics is dead; the age of populism is only beginning.