Brexit at 10: Political fragmentation and the rise of smaller parties

Arguably the most important political phenomenon of the 21st century has been the rise of the radical right across the developed world. UKIP’s emergence as a serious force in the years after 2008 was misinterpreted by the Conservatives as a call for an EU referendum, when it was driven primarily by the same broad factors that led to the AfD’s appearance in Germany and Marine Le Pen’s resurgence in France (as well as the Republican’s turn towards ‘tea party populism’ in the US).

The Conservatives crumble 

Rather than ‘lancing the boil’, the Leave campaign’s victory in 2016 supercharged this shift in the UK. The Conservatives were briefly able to take advantage by consolidating Leave voters into a new electoral coalition, but it was one that was much less amenable to the traditional Tory agenda. Historically the party had won significant numbers of votes from younger aspirational graduates working in the private sector. As recently as the 2010 election the Tories won the 18-34 age group. ⁸ www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2010

But Brexit saw a dramatic polarisation of the electorate around age and educational qualifications, as younger Remain voters shifted towards parties of left and centre. The Conservatives found themselves dependent on voters who hadn’t traditionally supported the party, were more authoritarian and less open to business-friendly economic policy. Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto, with its unusual focus on the NHS and redistribution, was designed to appeal to these voters but – even had it not been for Covid – would have been difficult to implement while keeping his MPs on board.

The re-emergence of Nigel Farage’s parties

The shakiness of this ‘realignment’ was apparent when Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party surged in the polls at the end of Theresa May’s troubled time in office. Johnson was able to pull them back briefly, but once he, and then Liz Truss, imploded Farage’s new party, Reform UK, was in place to absorb much of the Leave vote, given they were never particularly keen on the Conservatives.

Labour too saw a change in their voter coalition. A long-term movement towards more liberal, younger, graduates and away from older lower-income voters was rapidly sped up (helped by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader). This has led to something of an existential crisis for the party, with many MPs struggling to adapt psychologically to leading a more urban and middle-class party.
All these shifts would have happened to some degree regardless of Brexit, as we’ve seen across Europe, but their speed destabilised the traditional parties. At the same time, attempts to deliver on the referendum made governing much harder – both due to the economic harm and the opportunity cost of the time spent figuring out a way through.

The end of the two-party system?

The consequence is the multi-party system we now have with both Tories and Labour facing serious competition within their post-Brexit voting blocs. We don’t know exactly how this will play out over the next few years but a return to straightforward two-party politics in England, moderated by the Liberal Democrats, seems highly unlikely. In Scotland and Wales, nationalist parties have been able to take leadership of the Remain bloc, further complicating the picture.

One remarkable aspect of the post-Brexit polarisation is that it hasn’t diminished much as the issue itself as faded and other priorities have come to the fore. Almost a quarter of Leave voters would now choose to rejoin the EU, but many of them would still vote for Reform. In the recent local elections, Farage’s party averaged around 40% of the vote in wards where more than 60% voted Leave, but only around 10% in areas where fewer than 40% did. ¹¹ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/britains-two-party-era-is-ending-but-the-roots-of-fragmentation-run-deep/

This is partly because immigration has replaced Brexit as a proxy issue around which the same coalitions polarise. Those who see it as the number one priority are highly likely to have voted Leave, as well as being older, white, more male and with lower educational qualifications. Though Reform were forged in the aftermath of the EU referendum, they are now far more associated with pledges to deport migrants, via highly authoritarian policies, than they are with Europe. Farage, and his supporters in the press, still defend Brexit but they don’t major on it.

For now politics is a competition to see who can most effectively consolidate the Leave or Remain bloc, whether directly or through tactical voting, while attempting to win over a smaller pool of floating voters. But these blocs are largely orthogonal to questions of economic policy that are most critical to the country’s future. Recent polling I commissioned ¹² https://samf.substack.com/p/wheres-the-centre?r=72szy  shows voters in the two blocs are more likely to agree with each other on many economic questions than they are with swing voters. This includes having more negative attitudes towards big business and AI, as well as supporting a generous welfare state (at least towards pensioners). 

What does this mean for government in 2026?

The big challenge for Reform and the Conservatives should either, or both, find themselves in government, will be how to align their supporter base with their largely Thatcherite beliefs, and the interests of their donors. While Labour might be more open to economic populism of the type offered by the Greens, they have discovered in government how hard this is to meld with policies that encourage growth. The risk is that, in order to appease largely values-based coalitions, parties focus on second order issues and continue to ignore the most important questions facing the country.

One way a Labour government could seek to combine an economic argument with an issue that animates their voters would be to reopen the question of EU, or single market, membership. Though this would come with obvious risks, not least re-polarising society even more aggressively second time around, it is one of very few issues that both appeals to left/centre voters and would unquestionably drive economic growth. Should this government, whether under a new leader or not, find itself struggling in the polls come 2028, splitting their vote with the Greens, and with Farage on the verge of becoming prime minister it may seem a justifiable roll of the dice.