According to The Guardian, voters in England, Scotland, and Wales cast ballots on 7 May 2026 in local council elections plus polls for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd. Reform UK made sweeping gains while Labour lost hundreds of seats and several councils.
The Conservative Party, known as the Tories, originated in the 17th century. The Labour Party formed in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee, created by trade unions, the Independent Labour Party, and Fabian socialists to give working people a voice in Parliament. It adopted the name Labour Party in 1906, won its first majority government in 1945, and built the post-war welfare state, including the National Health Service. Both the Tory and Labour parties are now falling out of power, which is the equivalent of waking up one day to find the Democrats and Republicans are no longer the top two parties in America.
Reform UK gained 873 council seats to reach 936 total and took control of seven councils, including Sunderland, Havering, Essex, Suffolk, Thurrock, and Wakefield. Labour lost a net 595 seats, dropped to control of 22 councils, and surrendered heartland authorities such as Tameside, Hartlepool, Wigan, Birmingham, and Sunderland. The Conservatives lost a net 303 seats and control of councils including Essex, Suffolk, and Hampshire. The Liberal Democrats and Green Party each gained seats in targeted areas. National equivalent vote share stood at Reform UK 27%, Conservatives 20%, and Labour 15%, according to Sky News analysis.
In Wales, Labour suffered a historic defeat, the first in over 100 years. First Minister Eluned Morgan lost her seat. Labour fell to third place with just 10 seats.
On February 8, 2026, Japanese voters handed Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a historic landslide. The LDP alone captured 316 of 465 seats, the first time any single Japanese party has secured a two-thirds supermajority in the postwar era. Takaichi, a leading voice in the party’s conservative-nationalist wing, ran on national pride, constitutional revision for stronger self-defense, tougher stances on China and immigration, and economic policies centered on Japanese interests first.
A Global Cultural Realignment
These are symptoms of a global cultural realignment. In the United Kingdom, Reform UK is replacing the old Tories as the party of national sovereignty, while Greens and Muslim independents are replacing Labour in its traditional strongholds, a mirror-image fragmentation where both establishment parties lose ground to forces that reject the old consensus. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) surges against the Green Party, which many see as the purest expression of globalist priorities on climate, migration, and supranational rules. In the United States, the pattern repeats on both sides: Democratic Socialists like Zohran Mamdani, who just became New York City’s mayor after a stunning upset, are displacing old-school Democrats with a more radical, internationalist vision, while MAGA has replaced the old-guard Republicans with an unapologetically America-first agenda.
At its core, this is not primarily an economic fight. It is a fight over culture. Globalists believe there is one emerging global monoculture, borderless, homogenized, and progressive, and they achieve it by adding “diversity” everywhere, which in practice means diluting every distinct regional or national culture until nothing local remains. Nationalists believe in regional cultures: Japanese culture for Japan, Welsh culture for Wales, Texan culture for Texas. The mechanism that makes this debate explosive is immigration. The old debate was purely economic. The new one is cultural: globalists say “diversity is our strength,” nationalists see it as cultural dilution.
The new parties like AfD, Reform UK, and MAGA are not just against illegal immigration. They are against all immigration. And these are the center-right parties. There are more extreme parties (like Restore UK) that don’t just want to stop immigration but send all the immigrants back.
Making Sense of the Baffling
This cultural war explains a lot of phenomena that otherwise seem baffling. It explains “gays for Palestine,” which isn’t about actually living under Hamas rule but about using any non-Western group as leverage against whatever the local majority culture happens to be. It explains the recent bonding of Japanese nationalists and American nationalists on X, where both groups viscerally reject what they call “gay communism” and the deliberate dilution of their own cultures. It even explains the otherwise hard-to-understand fact that self-described racists in America are bonding with self-described racists in Japan: old racism was about claiming your race was superior; the new version is simply preferring a specific culture over the global homogenized one. And it explains why Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey has no Greek actors in major roles. Hollywood operates as a globalist institution: any ethnicity is acceptable so long as it is not Greek. Cultural erasure dressed up as “inclusivity.”
From Tokyo to Cardiff, from Berlin to New York, voters are choosing the flag they grew up with over the one-size-fits-all banner of the global village. The battle is cultural, the mechanism is immigration, and the pattern is now unmistakable.
What This Means for Your Story
How does this impact your story? One word: diversity. The old view was a ragtag band of diverse characters taking on the monolithic empire. But readers don’t resonate with that kind of story like they once did. Diversity is now the hammer of the empire to smash down the local regional cultures. Diversity is no longer what takes down the Death Star. It is the Death Star.
The Global Pattern: Flags and Factions
Thomas: Reform UK gained 873 seats to reach 936, which means they previously had about 50. They’ve now taken control of local councils in places like Sunderland, Havering, Essex, and Suffolk. Reform UK won in London. Nigel Farage gave his victory speech in London. For those who don’t follow UK politics, this is like the Republicans winning in San Francisco.
The Conservative Party also lost seats. The Conservatives were in power until five minutes ago. Labour and the Conservatives have been trading places since Labour took control right after Winston Churchill. Now they’re in third and fourth place. The Labour prime minister won’t get replaced through a vote of no confidence because all of the Labour people who would’ve replaced him did just as badly. There’s no up-and-coming whippersnapper waiting in the wings.
The other party that gained a lot was the Muslim Independent Party. The Muslims in London and the UK are now voting for their own party. All of the concessions they got from Labour, who’d been bringing over millions of Muslim immigrants to bolster their support, didn’t hold. The Muslims went their own way and voted for their own people.
We see the same lines in Germany with the AfD as the nationalist party and the Green Party as the globalist party, replacing old-school parties like the Christian Democrats. In the United States, the Democrat factions that are winning are the Zohran Mamdani types, straight-up globalist. The MAGA part of the Republican Party has completely obliterated the non-MAGA part. In Indiana’s elections this past week, the Republicans who voted against Trump in the redistricting almost all lost.
You can actually see this fight with the flags. The globalists all fly the rainbow pride progress flag. The nationalists all fly the American flag, or the Rising Sun in Japan, or the Union Jack or Cross of St. George in the UK. I see this in my own neighborhood.
Jonathan: Back during the protests from 2020 through 2023, anyone carrying an American flag was assumed to be racist, because it was nationalist, and therefore anti-anything else.
Thomas: Globalists really dislike national symbols. They dislike national flags and statues of national heroes. When they get into power or riot, one of the things they target are symbols of cultural or national pride. Thomas Jefferson statues must be torn down, Columbus statues must be torn down. In New York the Italian community literally surrounded Columbus statues with their bodies and protected them.
Ultimately this is not an economic fight, even though a lot of the dialogue frames it in economic language. It’s about culture. The defining feature that all of these elections are hinging on is immigration. The new parties are trying to preserve national culture and national identity. Once you understand this culture war, a lot of things that otherwise don’t make any sense will make sense, and you’ll understand your readers a little bit better.
The Gays for Palestine movement is about using diversity to dilute whatever the local culture is. The bonding between Japanese nationalists and American nationalists on X is happening because if you’re a Japanese nationalist who has spent 10 years fighting what they call “gay communism,” and you finally get access to translated tweets and realize Americans feel the same way, there’s an instant bond. The new racism isn’t about claiming your race is superior. It’s about preferring a specific culture over the homogenized global culture. American nationalists support Japanese nationalism because they’re fighting the same homogenized culture.
Cross-Cultural Bonding Through Technology
The bonding between Japanese and American nationalists on X is partly possible because Grok is translating tweets. It no longer has to go through the aristocratic class who could afford interpreters. Blue-collar Japanese people on X are interacting with blue-collar Texans. There’s this video of an American doing a kata with his AR-15 instead of a katana to honor Japanese culture, which America’s rifle.
Jonathan: You can also see nationalist backlash in Korea against American influencers. There was an influencer, Johnny Somali, who was being disrespectful on camera. The Koreans crowdsourced a bounty for anyone who’d punch him in the face on the street, then arrested him and sentenced him to hard labor about three weeks ago.
Thomas: The reaction among American nationalists was “Good. This guy disrespected your local culture and he should be punished.” There was no rallying around him as a fellow American. The sentiment was: we’re tired of regional cultures being disrespected, tired of diversity being shoved down our throats, tired of our national symbols being shown disrespect.
Jonathan: We all understand disrespect. You don’t walk into my house and behave disrespectfully to my wife or daughters or me. When you come into my country, you don’t disrespect my culture. When I go to your country, I won’t disrespect yours. This is where violence comes from.
Star Wars, Storytelling, and the Diversity Shift
Thomas: George Lucas wanted to promote diversity in Star Wars and used aliens as a metaphor. Admiral Ackbar is ugly on purpose because Lucas wanted to show good guys could be ugly, while the Empire was exclusively white men. But in the remakes, a lot of the Rebellion became white women, and the diversity got pushed into this homogenized version representing LA rather than the original alien-metaphor diversity.
Writing for the Underserved Audience
This MAGA, Reform UK, AfD audience is very underserved. The easiest money right now in culture-making is creating content for these new emerging parties that want their culture specifically represented. Some random guy from India used AI to create a God-and-country, guns-and-Bibles influencer and made thousands of dollars because the demand for that content far exceeds the supply. If you would have the courage to express your local culture boldly and in opposition to the global homogenized culture, you’ll be shocked at how many people respond with “Yes, finally, somebody is expressing my culture in a positive way.”
Jonathan: When I write for Marines, we bash the Air Force. I’m not trying to be nice to them. They have their own books that bash me, and I think that’s correct. When they make crayon jokes about me, I make them better, then I make Chair Force jokes. When you write to your culture, it makes them feel actually represented. My readers message me saying, “This was great. It brought me right back.” Others say, “Oh, this is why my Marine friend is like this. You guys think like this.”
Speak to your culture. Talk to the people who will understand what you’re talking about. If you are American, be America first in your book. You don’t have to be MAGA. But if you want to grab a lot of these readers who only understand America First through MAGA, you might need to use that language and vocabulary.
Thomas: I would encourage you to be even more specific than America First. I have an episode about the 10 regional cultures in the United States. Pick which one you want to focus on. A lot of these regional cultures have never been expressed in fiction, and they’re longing for somebody to do it in a way that’s non-judgmental.
Canadian Separatism and the Alberta Movement
In Canada, those anti-globalist free radicals are settling differently than elsewhere, and that is separatism. The Alberta separatist movement has passed the threshold of signatures, and they’re going to vote to leave Canada. Alberta culturally has far more in common with Texas than with Toronto, and Alberta pays a huge amount of money to Toronto that they don’t get back. They want economic ties with America, pipelines to buy and sell oil, but they do not want American laws or Congress. They want to be their own thing, standing against globalism, and they see Toronto and Canadian culture generally as the globalism they’re fighting against.
Canada’s challenge is that it’s not a single country in any real cultural sense. Quebec has been trying to leave since it entered. Every major Canadian city is closer to its sister American city than to another Canadian city. Canada has never been able to develop its own cuisine, which is a sign of how well a culture is doing. They have poutine, which is a dish, not a cuisine. Texas, by contrast, has Tex-Mex, a whole cuisine based on our unique history of Mexican and German culture. I can summarize Tex-Mex simply: it’s Mexican food covered in melted German cheese.
Tribes, Hockey Romance, and the Longing for Belonging
Jonathan: Alex Newton from K-lytics just released a report that hockey romance is huge. Hockey manages to keep its team identity stronger than, say, football, because of the tribal element. These romances come with a quasi-nationalistic, tribal strength. There’s a strong culture you’re coming into, and you either clash with it or meld with it.
Thomas: That longing for a tribe is a symptom of the global homogenized culture making people feel isolated and alone. Feeling like they have a team, people who are like me who like me, that’s what a tribe is. People are so desperate for friends. It can be a hockey team, a bowling team, a book club.
In Short: Know Your Timothy
Jonathan: Canadian separatist military fiction might be the next big thing. That would be a very cool sci-fi or post-apocalyptic world to explore.
Thomas: And you know exactly who you’re marketing it to and exactly how to structure it. Notice how the marketing and writing get easier when you have clarity on your target audience. You don’t have to be from Alberta to write this book. This is the power of having a Timothy, a specific ideal reader. If you have a clear Timothy, you can write specifically for that person without being that person. It helps to be that person, though.
Jonathan: Someone I really enjoyed who wasn’t one of us but wrote for us was Karen Traviss. She wrote Star Wars novels and was an Iraq War correspondent. She wrote the Republic Commando novels, and they were so accurate to military life. She talked about how the magazine was on the wrong side of the rifle to reload. Going through Order 66 as the military carrying it out resonated powerfully with military readers because she knew the culture from being a war correspondent.
Sources: The Guardian: Elections 2026 live updates Wikipedia: 2026 United Kingdom local elections Sky News: Reform UK surge analysis Press Association via Yahoo News: Results in maps and charts
Sources:
The Guardian: Elections 2026 live updates
Wikipedia: 2026 United Kingdom local elections
Sky News: Reform UK surge analysis
Press Association via Yahoo News: Results in maps and charts
