‘The centre cannot hold’: John Curtice on the collapse of two-party politics

·34 min·2 clips

Labour won a landslide with just 35% of the vote, the lowest ever for a majority government.

The mood is all firefighting. Immigration keeps dragging itself back to the front of the government's week, with Starmer blaming the last government over asylum seekers and promising to close hotels as fast as he can. Then the budget question lands. Asked about Labour's promises on income tax, national insurance, and VAT, Starmer points to 26 November instead of giving the answer. It is brittle politics. Labour is described as facing plummeting electoral fortunes, while the government tries to stay ahead of immigration rows and the build-up to the budget. John pulls the argument back to the numbers. He says attitudes to immigration have moved in a more negative direction recently, but only around a third see it as damaging to the economy or culture. That changes the story. This is not a simple national lurch, because those figures are still less negative than they were at the beginning of this century. The sharper problem is party control. John says 2024 raised the blunt question of whether elections are still won from the centre in the old way. His answer is not comforting. Conservatives can no longer assume there is nothing dangerous on their right, and Labour can no longer assume there is nothing dangerous on its left. Farage is the pressure point. John says Farage came back after saying he would only return to British politics if replacing the Conservatives as the main party of the right looked possible. So far, John says, that project is doing very well. On Labour's side, the Greens are nibbling away at support, which adds to the squeeze on the old two-party order. The centre also lacks a storyteller. John contrasts Farage and Polanski as charismatic fringe figures with a centre that struggles to say what it is for. The verdict is dry and severe. Britain now looks, in John's phrase, like a Yatesian world where the centre cannot hold.

As heard by us

A measured Westminster check-in on Labour's immigration problem, the budget build-up and a political landscape that looks less secure than before.

Politics Weekly UK pulls together three pressures: Labour's immigration headache, the budget countdown, and John Curtis's case that two-party politics feels less settled than it used to.

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Why you'd press play

For a clear read on Labour's squeeze, Curtice's warning, and the budget drumbeat.

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