‘Progressive Parties Must Start Working Together or Concede the Next General Election to the Nationalist Right’

The great fragmentation of UK party politics unfolds before our eyes. It’s been decades in the making as a system designed to create, embed and maintain a two-party system, finally succumbs to the fractured social, cultural and political reality all around it.

While this party-political rollercoaster will have many twists and turns, the eventual fractured destination means our political class must learn how to navigate and negotiate the complexities and nuances of a multi-party-political system.

Like 2019 to get Brexit done and in 2024 to kick the Conservatives out, this doesn’t mean that majority governments are impossible if an issue temporarily galvanises enough of the electorate, but any subsequent parliamentary dominance is unlikely to translate into governing coherence. Because of underlying fractures, parties remain in office but not in power. Hence the chaos after 2019 and increasingly since 2024. 

Meanwhile, the country needs long-term investment and reform on every front; from education, health and housing, to transport and economic productivity. 

No single party any longer has the political or electoral bandwidth to offer such long-term stability. Instead, it will have to be created not within a single political party but across several. A future that will have to be negotiated precisely because it cannot be imposed. 

If we take the opinion polls since April, no party has the backing of more than 33% of the electorate, in many, five parties’ poll over 10%, and in Scotland and Wales, the electorate face a choice of six parties. Support for Muslim independents further complicates the field, and all this before Your Party is properly out of the starting gate. 

In all this, two clear left and right blocks are emerging, with the backing of roughly 50% of the population each. Both are divided. But the right has only two parties, the Conservatives and Reform, and considerable pressure is already building for a ‘Unite the Right’ strategy. 

Remember that this doesn’t need anything difficult and convoluted like a public pact, but merely the same backroom deal that Keir Starmer and Ed Davey struck before the last election, to stand candidates everywhere but only focus resource where their party can win. And recall that the right lost in 202 seats where they had a majority of the vote in 2024 but splitting it let the progressive candidate in. 

But on the progressive side, things are now so much more complicated. Four parties could be contesting the progressive vote, with five in Scotland and Wales.  But this isn’t just a numbers game, but one of morality and values. 

Back in 2017, when Theresa May enjoyed a huge poll lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, Compass the organisation I’m the director of, instigated what we called a Progressive Alliance, a deal to unite the left and centre left vote to defeat the Conservatives.  

It almost worked, not least because selfless Greens stood aside to ensure dozens of desperate Labour candidates won against the odds. But the Labour HQ in its arrogance, refused to stand aside for anyone and still does.

Greens understandably felt cheated and vowed not to repeat their generosity. But it’s not just the culture of Labour which now blocks the prospects for cooperation, but the content. Because the charge now against Labour isn’t just that it refuses to build alliances but has vacated the progressive field through decisions like the winter fuel and benefit cuts and its inaction over Gaza. So why would other progressives lend them their vote? 

But while Labour must change, other parties also need to sharpen their thinking and their approach.

Zarah Sultana, the co-leader of Your Party, said in a recent interview that “the Labour party is dead” and went on, “some Labour MPs who consider themselves on the left are still clinging to its corpse”.  But then remarked that, “I’m open to electoral alliances”.  But with whom and how? It’s an urgent question. 

We ran a progressive alliance against the relatively unthreatening May – now the threat is much bigger – but it’s not enough for Your Party and the Greens to do a left-wing deal – we need a majority in the Commons – so it must include Labour – but for that to happen Labour has to become more radical on social, economic and democratic issues. 

Of course, Reform could self-destruct, the Conservatives might not find a way out of their polling doldrums and Labour might be able to eke its way to a small majority. But even if this was possible, on its own Labour can only win by promising like 2024 not to change anything of significance. Thus, sowing the seeds of further social, economic and political decline that will be harvested eventually by the nationalistic populists. 

The only way to build a long-term progressive future for our country is via a Progressive Alliance or New Popular Front, a compact between parties of the centre and the left which delivers a mandate for radical pragmatic change over the long term.  

The biggest stumbling block to this essential step is the small cabal of progressive-hating bureaucrats who currently run Labour. But this can and must change.

Labour’s membership and the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party have long embraced the case for electoral reform and with it the instrumental benefits of consensus politics. And as the revolt over disabled benefits showed, there is a clear majority of Labour MPs who want to make society more equal and not less.

This is not an issue that can be put off to the next general election. Votes next May for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd could well result in no party having overall control.

If progressive parties can’t find a way of working together, then the Conservatives and Reform will. Cooperation, or not, will shape the future of British politics. If we are to head off the existential threat of national populism, then we’re going to need an alliance that is progressive or a front that is truly popular.