Local election results show there’s more impetus than ever for a second referendum

Labour and the Tories haven’t got much to look forward to in the European elections next month

He is thought of as dry and vulpine, with a nice line in irony – yet what were heralded as the best results for the Liberal Democrats in decades has placed an uncomplicated, broad smile on the face of Vince Cable. So unused is Sir Vince at greeting good news for his party that you could almost hear the creaks as his facial muscles arranged themselves into such an unfamiliar contortion. At last he has something to hand on to his successor.

Not since the tuition fees fiasco poleaxed their credibility have the Liberal Democrats had so much to feel good about. Brexit, otherwise loathsome, has given them an unexpected bonus. Sir Vince decided to come out of the EU closet and tell the world that his party was, quite simply, the “Stop Brexit” party. Two words: it worked. The Greens, equally enthusiastic for Europe, also enjoyed their best night since the 1989 European elections delivered a shock third place to them. The recent Extinction Rebellion, and the powerful voices of Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg, have rightly reminded voters that there is more to politics than Brexit – and the future of life on Earth is in real jeopardy.

The other group, or rather non-group, that did exceptionally and unexpectedly well were the independent candidates standing for their local authorities. Such figures were once relatively commonplace in the local government landscape, independent-minded folk of a practical and more politically neutral cast of mind who only wished to serve their communities without party favour. Some were, in reality, Tories in disguise, usually dedicated to keeping the rates (the forerunner to the council tax) down, but not all were, and one might have feared that a more vicious political culture had driven them into virtual extinction. Now they are back, another sign of the British electorate’s growing disillusion with our traditional party structures.

Perhaps it was just as well for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens that the local elections arrived too soon for Change UK to register and contest seats. Had they done so, they might well have split the vote in the broad, pro-EU, progressive movement, with grievous results. These three smaller parties may regret their failure to cooperate when the European parliament elections arrive, almost certainly, on 23 May.

Which leaves the much-denuded “main” parties pondering their own plight. The Conservatives were, at least superficially, the more badly abused by the electorate. In simple terms, as formulated by the veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bernard Jenkin, the party is “toast”. Even allowing for the fact that the seats were last contested in 2015, on the same day that David Cameron won an overall majority for them, it is a precipitous fall – and that was, in fact, a mediocre showing four years ago. Hundreds and hundreds of council seats lost, “key” administrations handed over to the opposition or to no overall control, often decent and hardworking people suffering from events far beyond their control (or, with Brexit, apparently beyond anyone’s control).

For Labour, the breakthroughs did not arrive. Like the Conservatives, their national equivalent vote share (allowing for the pattern of contests) is about 6 or 7 percentage points slower than last year, and that, it must be said, had to be a disappointment for Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues.

Given that Labour is facing the most divided and weak administration in decades, it ought to have been winning seats and votes across the board. Rather than their infamously fudged policy on Brexit and the second referendum succeeding in attracting both Leave and Remain supporters, as probably happened in the 2017 general election, it now seems equally unattractive to both sides of the European debate. The voters are no longer fooled by Labour’s obvious non-policy.

Neither have Labour and the Tories got much to look forward to in the European elections next month (assuming they are held). The remarkable intervention of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party – like Change UK it registered too late to fight in these local elections – threatens to punish the Conservatives still further, with many of the Tories’ own councillors (or ex-councillors) and other activists going “on strike” for the duration. It could be that the Conservatives, in just a few weeks, will fall to their lowest vote share in any national election during their entire domination of the British political scene. There may be regions – London, for example – where they finish behind not only the Brexit Party and Labour but also the Liberal Democrats and, possibly, the Greens and Change UK: sixth place in a major election in the capital city. It would be a truly humiliating experience for them, a shock even by the current miserable standards. By the same token, Labour too will fall further from its unimpressive performance this week. To adapt an old slogan, Labour’s Brexit policy isn’t working. It doesn’t add up, and the country, and Labour, knows it.

Brexit, then, is once again proving utterly unmanageable and disruptive for our traditional party system. It has already forced defections and splits, and both the main parties appear increasingly like disorderly gangs barely able to bear their own company. The parties, by contrast, that have a clear unequivocal message – the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the Brexit Party – are benefiting from the public mood and yearning for clarity. The great irony is that the very stasis that both Labour and the Conservatives find themselves in will merely strengthen the position of their respective leaders.

The deadlock on Brexit that is wrecking normal political life, as well as the economy, can only be broken by a popular vote, one way or the other. Dramatic as the results are and will be, nothing in the local or European elections results will shift the policy of the government or of Labour. That means, as we all know, a referendum is inevitable. Then normal politics can, at long last, be resumed, and the Brexit fatigue can end. It is what, in its inchoate way, the electorate has been trying to tell our leaders.