In a rare confluence, Canada, England and Australia held elections within a week of one another. England’s local elections may turn out to be the most consequential of the three for centre-right politics. Canada’s Conservatives saw a 20-point advantage in the polls slide behind the governing Liberal party on 28 April, Reform UK caused a political earthquake on 1 May and Australia’s Coalition suffered a shockingly bad defeat to hand Labor a landslide re-election on 3 May.

Canada’s Pierre Poilievre was blindsided by the defenestration of the deeply reviled Justin Trudeau and his replacement by the globalist banker Mark Carney. I agree with James Allan’s assessment that Poilievre performed exceptionally well in the context of Canadian political history. He lost mainly because the left vote coalesced around Carney while many Conservative votes are wasted, concentrated in too many safe seats and not spread evenly enough to tip the scales in competitive seats. However, I disagree with Jim in that without Trump’s incendiary comments on gobbling up Canada as a 51st US state, Poilievre would have won.

Of the three leaders, Nigel Farage has had the longest personal relationship with Trump. Farage never disowned the friendship yet neither did he kiss Trump’s ass, to use one of the president’s favourite expressions about many high-ranking supporters. Elon Musk attacked Farage and suggested he should step aside as party leader in favour of Rupert Lowe who had developed something of a cult following in his own right as an attack dog in parliament. Farage ousted one of just five Reform MPs from the party and referred Lowe to the police in March for alleged threats against party chairman Zia Yusuf. This caused short-term embarrassment but the fact that Farage had moved quickly to take forceful action against a seemingly errant MP probably worked to bolster his image as a decisive leader.

More importantly, Farage and the party kept up their relentless attacks on the Labour-Conservative uniparty and positioned themselves as the only true centre-right conservative alternative. Their charge of ‘Vote Conservative, get Labour’ resonated in the May local elections and has acquired greater cogency after the results. Their sharp ‘product differentiation’ from the Tories on immigration, net zero, DEI and gender wars, constantly reminding voters of the Tories’ failure in 14 years to address any of these hot button issues, struck a deep and wide chord across broad swathes of the electorate. The white hot rage still bubbling against the great betrayal of values and election manifestos by the Tories and the haemorrhaging of support from the Labour government after Keir Starmer’s loveless landslide a year ago were harnessed to an assiduous and meticulous build-up of the party structure, greater attention to candidate selection than in last year’s general election and a spectacularly successful membership drive that saw them overtake the Conservatives by the end of 2024. The channelling of the high-voltage energy of enthusiastic campaigners, leafleters, activists and supporters ensured a high voter turnout.

The result? From a standing start, the party won 31 per cent of the votes cast to gain control of ten of the 23 councils that went to the polls, won 677 council seats and two mayoral races, and has regained a fifth MP in a by-election held on the same date in one of Labour’s safest seats, even if with the slim margin of six votes. The Conservatives lost 674 council seats to be reduced to just 319 councillors and lost control of all 16 council authorities they were defending. Labour lost 187 councillors to end up with only 98 seats. The Liberal Democrats gained 163 seats and control of three councils. Farage is right to hail the results as seismic, signifying the end of two-party politics. Allison Pearson reports on the case of a 99-year-old grandmother, who served as a Wren working on Enigma code-breaking in the second world war, who went down to the polling station by herself to vote for Reform, determined to save Britain while there is yet time. Reform has been transformed from an electoral pressure point on Labour and the Conservatives into a distinct and long-term electoral force that will cannibalise Tory voters to pose the most likely serious threat to the singularly uninspiring Starmer come the next general election. Meanwhile, there’s the postponed local elections to come next year and, whenever the general election is held, Reform will have a vastly expanded cadre of ground troops along with a record to show they mean business different from the insipid governance of the uniparties. Farage and his deputy Richard Tice have already warned of an aggressive push to rollback DEI and net zero initiatives in councils under Reform control. A BBC projection of the local results to the national level shows Reform first with 30 per cent of the votes, followed by Labour on 20, LibDems 17 and Conservatives a distant fourth on 15 per cent. With that spread, Britain’s first-past-the-post system would deliver a landslide to Reform. That’s how much of a revolution it was. Farage could be the de facto leader of the opposition in the present and the PM in the next parliament.

The explanation for the success of Reform in England holds a mirror to explain the failure of the Coalition in Australia. The post mortems on flawed strategy and tactics will distribute the blame between the leader, party and communications team. The failure to brand the Coalition as a serious and credible alternative with a set of values more in tune with core Australian values is a failure principally of the leader. Peter Dutton refused to heed the exhortations of James Allan to fire his focus group-driven advisers or the advice of the magazine’s editor to join the global shifts away from net zero, mass immigration, state censorship, DEI and gender-fluid identity. Dutton and his team seemed too ashamed to speak up for any identifiable conservative values, without which it becomes impossible to craft a narrative, strategy and campaign tactics. When the party brass are too embarrassed to talk core conservative values, conservative voters are neither excited nor inspired. They failed to frame a narrative about Albanese by zooming in on his lies, duplicity, evasions and incompetence; on the falling standard of living by OECD standards; on the looming theft of people’s savings through an impost on unrealised capital gains from super funds that, through bracket creep, will rapidly trap a growing number of Australians; on the betrayal of Israel and the timorous handling of the growing China threat. The exceptionally target-rich record of the government in power was matched by the most inept campaign I have witnessed. Labor didn’t deserve to win but, boy, did the Coalition deserve to lose. If they fail to confront and address their multiple value and message deficits they will be consigned to the political wilderness for a long time to come.

For a congenital optimist, the May rosebuds of consolation are to be found in the electoral retreat of the Greens. I’ll take the sorry crumbs of comfort.