Why these elections are so important 

Today's elections could be the most consequential of my lifetime, outside of a general election. Here’s why.

First, if they are as catastrophic for Labour as some polls indicate, they may send Labour MPs into paroxysms of despair, and set in train a challenge to Starmer’s leadership of the party and country.

That would lead to governmental paralysis and turmoil in bond markets - even if in the end, Prime Minister Keir Starmer survives.

Buckle up.

Second, if Reform does as well as expected in English local elections and in Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections, many would see them as the real representatives of right-wing Britain.

That would be a challenge to the status and authority of the Conservative Party, for all that Kemi Badenoch is widely seen to be performing effectively as their leader and they remain the official opposition in parliament.

Talk of Reform eventually absorbing the Tory Party, before the next general election, would only intensify.

Third nationalist parties are like to be in charge in the parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the SNP and Plaid are almost certain to form new respective governments in Scotland and Wales, and Sinn Fein is already the senior partner in Northern Ireland’s assembly.

This doesn’t mean that formal break up of the UK is imminent. But if you believe as I do that Newton’s first law applies to politics, it means the integrity of the UK would be much less secure than it was.

Fourth all the polls indicate the LibDems are treading water in terms of national vote share, and that disillusionment with the government and Tories is disproportionately benefiting Reform and the Greens.

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Given that the LibDems, or Liberals as they once were, would in the past have benefited from the ailing popularity of the two big parties, questions will be asked about whether Ed Davey is the most appropriate leader for these chaotic times - for all that his party hoovered up more seats in the last election than for decades.

By contrast and fifth, the Greens have surged thanks in large part to the positive charismatic force of one person, its leader Zack Polanski. Which implies the party has a lot of policy work to do to consolidate its position and be taken seriously as a potential party of government.

Sixth, the big story will be that there are now at least seven parties on the British mainland - Reform, the Greens, the LibDems, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Conservatives - with legitimate claims to have meaningful national, regional or local vote shares.

So the outcome could be the definitive end of Britain’s 250 years of two party politics. And because this degree of fragmentation is so new, it brings enormous uncertainties and dangers.

It means, for example, that - under our first-past-the-post electoral system - a party could win the votes of just one-in-six of us and yet have an absolute majority of MPs.

For the majority to be subject to rule by the representatives of such a small minority would be a duck that does not quack democracy.

It would be a crisis infecting our most important institution, parliament itself.

As I say, today’s polls matter.

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