Massive moment in politics yesterday with Labour losing the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby to Reform in what appears to have been a safe seat for them (even if by such a small margin) and the Tories failing to secure what should have been safe councils like Buckinghamshire.
I expected Labour to loose out in the North East over immigration but I'm suprised the Conservatives got so battered - I exepcted a decline to be sure but I thought it would take longer.
While Reform UK has definitively surged and are the most likely party to form a government next election except for Labour, the media seems to be underplaying the Lib Dems who now have the second highest amount of councillers - if the Conservatives and Labour continue to fall at the rate they're going then the Lib Dems (who love to protray themselves as the centrist party) seem like they'll be the ones to win out.
Labour is already far harsher on immigration than most people realise, and I wouldn't be suprised if they actually go through massive cut downs on it now that they've seen that Reform isn't just a threat to the Tories. If they do go through with it I wonder if it will be 'too little too late' for anti-immigration supporters and they'll support Reform to stop allmigration or if it will actually satisfy them. If so, I wonder what the result will be - Reform are mostly known and getting support for their anti-migrant stance (they wouldn't be so popular in the North East if their economic policies - which are basically Thatcherite - were more well-known, I believe or at least want to hope) and if the public thought migration had been "sorted" what would be left for the party to revolve their identity around - would they go full racist?
