Voters deliver two-fingered salute to the main parties and Britain’s entire political system

The unprecedented drubbing of the Conservatives and Labour at Thursday’s local elections may sound the death knell for two-party politics as independent councillors cleaned up at the polls amid growing anger over Brexit.

Theresa May was heckled and told to resign as she responded to heavy Tory losses that saw more than 1,200 seats vanish.

Voters delivered a two-fingered salute to Britain’s political system, with Left and Right still divided over the exit from the EU.

Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, described the results as a “slap in the face for both parties” with Conservative strongholds including Chelmsford and the Cotswolds handed to the Liberal Democrats while Labour lost seats in Bolsover, Sunderland and other northern heartlands. The projected national vote share – putting the Tories neck and neck with Labour on 28 per cent and “other parties” close behind on 25 per cent – appeared to suggest many voters now prefer “none of the above” to the main parties.

While Conservative voters punished the Tories in the south over the Government’s failure to deliver Brexit on March 29, northern Labour supporters appeared to voice their own protest at the party’s “constructive ambiguity” over Brexit. One Labour councillor blamed Remainer Yvette Cooper, saying she “wouldn’t know democracy if it scratched her in the eyeballs”. Although turnout was higher than expected, the forecast for the European Parliament elections on May 23 now looks ominous for the two main parties, with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party projected to win a 40 per cent share of the vote, pushing the Tories into third, or even fourth on 13 per cent.

Ukip, Mr Farage’s former party, appears all but finished, losing more than 30 local council seats following its lurch to the far Right in the hands of new supporters including Tommy Robinson, the former English Defence League leader. Significant gains for the Greens (up more than 180 seats) and independent candidates (up more than 200) will embolden the newly formed Change UK, which wants a second referendum.

Local elections are largely about bin collections, library closures and potholes but now, facing an election that nobody wanted for a parliament that 17.4 million people voted to leave, Britain appears to be on the verge of a seismic shift in a parliamentary democracy that was once the envy of the Western world.