Poll guru Sir John Curtice predicted the two major parties will be faced with a bad “prognosis” when Britons will return to the polls for the EU elections later this month. Sir John argued the results of Thursday local elections have made it clear the British two-party system has failed to satisfy the electorate a solution to the Brexit impasse could materialise from cross-party talks between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Sir John added the results will have put a smile on Nigel Farage’s face this morning.

He said: “It looks as though if you weren’t associated with a party at all in some instances the more attractive you looked to an electorate that’s basically seems to be saying not just ‘I’m a Leaver, why haven’t you delivered Brexit?’ or ‘I’m a Remainer, I want a second referendum’.

“But frankly ‘Why are both of you making what we rather think it’s a bit of a mess of it all’.

“Certainly, one thing this tells us is that an apparent restoration of the two-party system that we saw in the 2017 general election when Conservatives and Labour combined got over 80 percent of the votes – the highest combined share since 1970 – that looks like a rather short-lived phenomenon.

“These two parties, even without Brexit Party on one hand or Change UK on the other contesting these local elections, have seen that support has fallen away quite substantially.

Nigel Farage probably has a smile on his face this morning

Sir John Curtice

“Now what they would do, therefore, in the European elections when voters seem willing to vote for the smaller parties anyway, the prognosis doesn’t look that good for either of them.

“And Nigel Farage probably has a smile on his face this morning.

“And maybe even Chuka Umunna has at least a little scintilla of hope.”

The Tories lost hundreds of seats, enduring a night of mass councillor and council loses as frustrated Brexit voters took to the polls to vent their fury.

But Labour failed to seize the spoils from the Tories’ loss – with huge gains instead going to the Lib Dems, who boasted of their best night for 16 years as they secured around 200 new councillors, mainly picking up seats in safe Conservative and Labour areas. 

With almost half of English local council vote results declared, the Conservative Party lost 434 councillors and the Labour Party had lost 85 councillors so far.

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has opened up a nine-point lead ahead of its rivals in the lead-up to the European Parliament elections on May 23 to 26.

The Eurosceptic political party scored 30 percent – up two points from last week – in a YouGov survey for The Times.

Labour was down one point to 21 percent while the Conservatives showed no change on 13 percent in the survey of 1,630 adults polled on April 29 and 30.

The results also revealed the Brexit Party was backed by 48 percent of the over-65s who were polled, with 31 percent of them identifying as Tory supporters.

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