English politics is reeling from the seismic impacts of local elections, which took place on the first day of May. The UK's two biggest political parties were dealt a series of stunning blows by a disenchanted electorate, and don’t seem to have much idea of what to do or where to go from here.

So, where did it all go wrong?

Ten months ago, the current Labour government was elected. And, if Keir Starmer's entry into Downing Street wasn't exactly greeted with a fanfare of unanimous delight, there was at least a general sigh of relief that 14 years of increasingly disastrous Conservative rule had at last come to a bitter end.

Yet, since then, Sir Keir's popularity has plunged on a weekly basis to new lows, boasting approval ratings that might even have troubled Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss.

And, now languishing in opposition, the Tories have barely fared any better, with the poorly focused and lacklustre media appearances and parliamentary performances of their new-ish leader Kemi Badenoch repeatedly failing to knock the Prime Minister off his smug perch or even to hit the mark with her party's traditional fanbase. 

Of course, one of Ms. Badenoch's biggest problems is that, having lurched her party even further toward the extreme right on such subjects as immigration and human rights, it turns out that the racist chauvinists to whom that shift appears calculated to appeal might not be too keen on the idea of putting the UK's first black female premier into Number Ten.

Meanwhile, Mr. Starmer has time and again sabotaged his own best opportunities with his natural tendencies toward crippling levels of caution. A platform of policies, which once looked innovative and bold in terms of environmental investment, social justice, and economic growth, hardly even survived the election campaign, as he found himself manoeuvred by the outgoing Conservatives into making pledges on taxation that would stymie all his plans for the enhancement of key public services and industrial stimuli, pledges that have backfired on his administration almost as badly as the global woes provoked by America's unprecedented trade war on the rest of the world.

“Labour will increase taxes on workers,” the Tories had said, “on their national insurance contributions, income tax and value added tax.” 

“No, I won't,” Starmer had promised again and again, as sly old blues had sniggered quietly behind their hands. 

(And so instead, he abandoned winter fuel payments as a universal benefit for pensioners and increased employers' national insurance contributions.)

“Labour hates dirty fossil fuels,” they'd added mischievously. 

“I love them,” he'd declared.

(And so he'd rolled back on his green energy plans.)

Shortly after his government came to power, Keir Starmer faced the first major test of his resolve. A series of anti-immigration riots swept a few hot summer days and were met with all necessary force by the agents of the law, both the police and the courts.

While this show of strength initially played well with the media and the public, it has since been weaponized by the Far Right to create the myth that Sir Keir is soft on those seeking asylum from war-torn parts of the world we've helped to destabilize but disproportionately tough on true British patriots, who merely want to show their love of the union flag through acts of wanton violence against their fellow citizens and frontline emergency workers, through the destruction of public and private property, through the looting of expensive foreign-made electronic equipment, and through their love of swastika tattoos and Nazi salutes.

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In particular, this narrative has been stress-tested beyond any sense of the actual facts by the supporters of none other than the human equivalent of Toad of Toad Hall himself, that boorishly hearty lord of the manor, the man who brought us the UK Independence Party and Brexit and who now leads Reform UK, Mr. Nigel Paul Farage.

Last month, Farage hit the headlines once more when, in the days immediately before a series of polls for local council seats contested across England, he predicted that he had nearly a fifty per cent chance of becoming Prime Minister after the UK's next general election in four years' time. 

Indeed, the popularity of this most polarizing of figures hasn't waned, despite public infighting among his party's most senior members and continuing reports of racist, sexist, and Islamophobic social media posts published by quite a few of Reform UK's own candidates, candidates who appear somehow to have circumvented the party's purportedly rigorous vetting processes.

This is because, like his hero (and fellow narcissist) Donald Trump, Farage mocks the level-headedness of those cautious as to the possible consequences of their actions, ignores realities and responsibilities, invents his own truths, and does whatever the hell he wants. He is the embodiment of that morally impotent, toxic machismo that has tainted the White House with its orange stains.

And his followers love him for it because, in spite of his self-serving greed, wealth, and casually veiled disdain for the common people, he articulates their profound loathing of the liberal consensus which they believe has always looked down on them.

This was why, on the eve of the elections, the BBC’s political editor supposed that for once both of the main political parties looked extraordinarily unpopular and their hold on the loyalties of the public increasingly precarious.

Professor Sir John Curtice – the nation's best-respected psephologist – told the Daily Telegraph newspaper two days before the local polls that, whatever their results, mainstream politics in the UK was now dead, as the usual two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives suddenly looked open to lesser parties exploiting opportunities to make serious inroads with English voters.

As usual, he wasn't wrong. Indeed, in a symbolic bombshell, with more than 1,600 council seats up for grabs, Reform UK won the first seat of the night, in the traditional Labour heartland of northeast England, with nearly 60 per cent of the local vote.

Then, in another traditionally Labour-supporting area, England’s North West, Reform won a parliamentary by-election by just six votes, overturning a massive majority in a safe Labour seat and defeating the governing party by one of the narrowest margins in British political history.

These elections’ next piece of headline news saw Farage’s party claim its first mayoral victory and push Labour and the Conservatives into third or even fourth places in other mayoral contests.

While the Liberal Democrats saw decent gains, this was clearly looking to be Reform UK’s breakthrough moment.

As the council ballots were tallied on Friday, the overall results saw both Labour and the Tories hit new lows, with Reform's promises of the repeal of equality legislation, the diminution of the state, draconian curbs on immigration, and an endless flow of free cakes and ale for all right-thinking little Englanders, proving that our small nation isn’t immune to a resurgence of the demagogic xenophobia that has already started to rock the post-1945 political status quo in Germany and France.

This certainly looks like a paradigm shift in English politics, the kind of sea change that the Nationalists wrought in Scotland nearly fifteen years ago. 

Yet, it must also be admitted that local elections often, of course, represent nothing more than a protest vote against the government in power or against a party recently in power and that there's no guarantee that these results will be replicated at the next national polls in 2029.

And indeed it may well turn out that the inexperience, arrogance, and incompetence of Reform’s ragtag bunch of beer-swilling, gammon-faced, minority-bashing new councillors may over the next few years tarnish their party’s popularity with their electorates.

But, for the time being at least, Keir Starmer's bland utopia and Kemi Badenoch's bleak vision of the future appear to have been swept off the table by tides of nationalism and divisive, hate-fuelled rhetoric, by authoritarian populists who promise something far colder and crueller that England’s centuries-old centrists might have ever countenanced.