Has Britain entered a political death spiral?

Occasionally I will tune out of politics, especially when it goes quiet. It’s really not healthy to expose yourself to the daily torrent of miserable news without a break. The basic gist of politics right now is that the cost of everything is going up by more than you can afford, your job is being abolished, the things you enjoy are being made illegal/prohibitively expensive, they're devaluing your assets, replacing you with sexually incontinent low-IQ third worlders, and they want a big war so they can send your children away to die.

The future is that you will work to your grave and the moment you can’t afford your mortgage/rent, you’re either in the street or in a HMO, sharing with a bunch of strangers. Your pension will be worthless at this rate, especially if politicians appropriate the power to decide how it’s invested, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to take things like electricity for granted in a few years time.

Depressingly, most of these things are wholly self-inflicted. Things could be turned around in the meantime, but only by a razor sharp government with a clue what it’s doing. That just seems unrealistic for Britain.

I make no predictions about the next general election. It seems certain that the Labour vote will collapse, but the degeneracy and rank stupidity of the Green Party means there is no obvious place for the liberal left vote to go.

We will know more which way this goes very soon. Labour is on track to lose up to 1,800 councillors. If Labour performs the way we think they will in the local elections, it is likely that Keir Starmer will be given his marching orders, giving way to something even more unwholesome. One pundit suggests the bond market is starting to price in more socialism. The 10-year gilt yield will go through 5% — and the next PM won’t last five minutes.

As of late April 2026 the 10-year gilt yield is already sitting at 4.93–4.99%, the highest in years. Markets are grinding higher on sticky inflation, weak growth forecasts, energy shocks from the Middle East, and scepticism about any government’s fiscal credibility. A clean break above 5% would be brutal for mortgages, debt servicing, and whatever fiscal headroom the next lot think they have.

It seems, then, that we could be looking a bigger crisis, bringing about a much earlier general election. If Starmer goes then it is likely we will see a full-blown outbreak of Looney Tunes civil war on the left. Angela Rayner is the name that keeps surfacing, and unless I’m wildly out of touch, absolutely nobody outside the Westminster bubble seriously sees her as a viable proposition. Rayner is the bookies’ favourite, but she remains a polarising figure outside the activist base. A leadership contest could easily fracture Labour further between the soft left, the unions, and whatever remains of the centrists — handing Reform and the Tories a clear run in any early election.

What we’re likely to see, though, isn’t just anti-incumbent politics. Rather, it is structural fragmentation. First-past-the-post is breaking under multi-party reality - and virtually anything can happen, where turnout (unpredictable as it is) makes all the difference. Britain is becoming politically unstable and that’s not going to change for the foreseeable future.

Supposing we see a Reform/Tory coalition, we know that Nigel Farage isn’t up to the job and will be gone in under two years, perhaps handing the reins to Zia Yusuf, and it is likely to produce a chaotic government that’s big on promise but short on delivery, walking into ambushes and making problems for itself against a backdrop of strikes and unrest. They’ll do a few good things then run out of steam as they disintegrate, by which time the Tories might well start looking like a recovery option. Populism is likely to fail by way of its unpreparedness.

Here is where I concur with the influential X account “Drukpa Kunley”. “Though Populist governments will start to come to power in Europe in coming years probably inevitable many will be turfed out for inadequacies and you’ll have to wait until Second Wave Populism to see sustained results.”

First-wave populism (Reform, AfD, etc.) excels at channeling rage and breaking the Overton window. It is far less good at the grinding work of statecraft: detailed policy, competent personnel, and surviving the inevitable media-lawfare ambushes. A chaotic Reform-influenced government that delivers some wins on immigration and net zero but fails on growth and living standards would simply discredit the brand permanently - proving the sceptics right that rage alone is not a governing strategy..

This is precisely why I wanted to see something like Restore Britain, with a more serious agenda than Reform, but what we got was slop-tweeting from Rupert Lowe, zero policy development, and the rather frank admission from Lowe that if Restore doesn’t win in 2029 then he’s off elsewhere. What was actually needed was something that presumes Reform incompetence, building for the moment when it imploded. A ten to fifteen year plan.

There was never any possibility of replacing Reform as the default anti-incumbent party in the interim. Reform has brand recognition and exposure that Rupert Lowe simply cannot match in a short time. Unless you happen to be following Restore figures on X its political footprint is non-existent. Having deliberately steered by X algorithm away from the fringe right, even I’m surprised by how little reach it has.

Again we are confronted with the sad fact that the right doesn’t want to do the hard yards of starting from scratch. They want the solution delivered to them on a plate by somebody else and looks to the same handful of Ukippy flunkies to produce it.

Britain’s political system is fragmenting under first-past-the-post while facing deep structural crises that no single election will fix. The most likely path is continued instability, weak governments, and accelerating public disillusionment until a genuinely competent “second wave” emerges — or until something breaks. The latter seems more likely.

Ultimately, the public can persevere if there is light at the end of the tunnel. But there isn’t even a glimmer. Hardworking people have to endure increasing job insecurity, shrinking buying power, exorbitant bills and diminishing hopes of ever reaching a state of financial security. The ongoing conflict with Iran has pushed things to the brink. One more global shock could be the thing that ends the world as we have known it.