What Britain’s election shake-up means for American democracy

Party systems are less stable than they seem

This weekend’s New York Times dispatch from Britain captures a familiar pattern in two-party systems: growing public frustration, the rise of a disruptive outsider, and an electoral system that absorbs the shock — only to snap back to the same two-party shape. Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party made major gains in local elections, shaking up the status quo:

The electorate rejected both main parties, Professor Ford said, adding that, were a result like this to occur in a general election, “the Conservative Party would cease to exist as a meaningful force in Parliament.”

Yet even this surge may end not in transformation, but in the replacement of one major party by another:

Political scientists also say that a shift is underway that could transform the fortunes of Reform, taking what has been a protest party and turning it into a force that could make good on its ambition to replace the Conservatives as the main opposition party.

Right now, the UK’s party system seems to be in a moment of breakdown. We don’t know what’s coming next. Maybe Reform UK will displace the Conservatives as one of the two major parties; maybe they will fail as other third party disruptors have in the past. But regardless of what happens, it’s a reminder that even when voters cry out for new choices — regardless of the merits of those new choices — winner-take-all electoral systems will pull elections back toward just two options.

In rigid winner-take-all systems, parties fall — but the system stays the same

The U.K., like the U.S., uses an electoral system where the single candidate with the most votes wins. That structure reinforces a rigid two-party logic: When third parties gain traction, they often end up splitting the vote, helping the major party they least resemble. It’s a dynamic that punishes a diversity of viewpoints and rewards tribalism. So when movements like the Social Democrats, UKIP, or now Reform UK surge, they don't open space for multiparty democracy — they threaten to replace an existing party. Labour replaced the old Liberal Party. The Tories could now be replaced by an extreme right-wing party.

Sound familiar?

In America, Donald Trump didn’t need to form a new party — he simply overtook the Republican Party from within. But the pattern is the same: an aging party structure vulnerable to hijack by a populist insurgency. The result isn’t multiparty democracy; it’s still a two-party doom loop, just with a new face in one of the seats.

What can the US learn from Britain’s current moment?

First, winner-take-all systems may look stable — but their rigidity makes them brittle and prone to rupture when too many voices are shut out. Americans tend to view our two-party system as a permanent feature of political life. But history says otherwise. The Republican Party emerged in the 1850s from the wreckage of the Whigs. The New Deal realignment redefined Democratic politics for a generation. Today’s Republican Party — utterly transformed in less than a decade by Trump — shows how fast realignment can happen again. A winner-take-all system suppresses new voices until pressure builds — and then bursts.

Second, this instability presents both a risk and an opportunity. In the U.K., the danger is that Reform UK becomes the new dominant right-wing party, pulling the country further into nationalist populism. That’s a cautionary tale for the U.S. as we eye a possible post-Trump realignment.

But it also points to a strategic window: what if, instead of waiting for extremists to fill the void, pro-democracy leaders prepared for that turbulence and seized the moment?

A better party system is possible

Imagine a coalition of anti-MAGA Republicans and pro-democracy Democrats deciding — after Trump — to stop propping up a failing system. Instead of letting the next strongman ride through the same party gate, they could team up to break the two-party stranglehold altogether. They could push for proportional representation (PR) — a system used by most advanced democracies, where parties win seats in proportion to the votes they receive. PR makes multiparty democracy not only possible but durable. It means new parties can rise without replacing old ones. It reduces zero-sum politics and gives voters real choice.

So for instance, in a state like Massachusetts, proportional representation would mean voters could choose from a variety of parties — made possible by proportional, multi-member districts — instead of consistently electing nine Democratic representatives from single-member ones. (Read more about how proportional representation works here.)

It also forces cooperation — and coalitions. Under PR, few parties can manage to govern alone for long. That means negotiating across lines of difference, not exploiting them. In a time of democratic backsliding and political violence, that might be the medicine American democracy needs.

Right now, Britain’s major parties still have a choice. Labour and the Conservatives — if they can see beyond short-term electoral advantage — could join forces to reform the system by adopting proportional representation through a referendum or potentially even a simple act of Parliament. Yes, this would give Reform UK a presence in Parliament — but it would likely help block the extremist right from gaining majority control over government without actually having majority support among the voters, as has happened in the U.S.

Proportional representation and multiparty democracy is a big lift in both the U.S. and the U.K. But we should root for it. Because if the next big realignment locks either country into just another version of a broken duopoly, we’ll have missed the deeper lesson: the time to redesign the rules is during moments of party fracture, not after they’ve hardened again.

In the U.K., that moment is now. In the U.S., that moment may be coming sooner than we think. The only question is whether we’ll be ready.