Last week, Britain’s Conservative Party suffered what could well be its death blow. In a by-election to fill a vacant parliamentary seat in the Gorton and Denton constituency (located in and around Manchester in the country’s bleak industrial north), the Conservative candidate finished with just 1.9 percent of the vote—a dismal figure produced by just 706 voters.

The result was so poor that the world’s oldest and arguably most successful political party lost its deposit—that is, a GBP500 ($669) fee that candidates must pay as a deposit upon declaring candidacy to meet minimal election expenses. The deposit is refundable only if that candidate garners a minimal 5 percent of the ballot. The Conservatives’ failure in this instance put them in the same boat as Britain’s Communist League, for which only 29 people voted, and the Monster Raving Loony Party, a satirical political group whose candidate goes by the moniker “Sir Oink A-Lot.” That fellow won some 129 votes.

Of course, the results were far from stellar for the governing Labour Party, which won just over 25 percent of the vote despite having held the constituency without interruption for the last 95 years. The country’s frightfully unpopular Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer struggles with a terrible economy, an unending migrant crisis, rising crime, civil rights clashes over free speech and other traditional British liberties, a massive criminal justice scandal over Muslim rape gangs, the government’s exceedingly weak stance on Iran, and even Britain’s own set of revelations involving Jeffrey Epstein. Gorton and Denton was the scene of an intraparty showdown, where an insurgent Labour politician unsuccessfully sought selection as the party’s candidate, so that he could enter parliament and possibly challenge Starmer for the leadership.

In the end, about two-thirds of the vote was divided between the previously insignificant Green Party, whose candidate prevailed over the second-place Reform UK, the country’s most popular party. Under Nigel Farage’s leadership, Reform actively seeks to replace the Conservatives as the major party of the right.

Despite some internal dissension, Reform, which has only eight seats in parliament despite its massive popularity, shows every sign of forming Britain’s next government.

Fiercely pro-American, Reform resists the urge to reenter Europe, which any left-wing government may well do. It also rejects the legacy of the failing Conservative Party, which came under the control of its moderate wing.  The Tories now serve, essentially, as a faction of the country’s London-dominated social democratic establishment, known as the “Blob” (much like Americans referring to Washington as the “Swamp”).

Several Conservatives have defected to Reform in recent months, presaging potential mass defections from the former party as national elections, which must be held in 2029, draw near. If those elections were held today or in the near future, a possibility if Starmer falls victim to a greater scandal or division, most analysts believe Reform would win a decisive majority of about 400 seats. Moreover, an upcoming election is likely to see both Labour and the Conservatives, a duopoly in place since the 1920s, shrink to minority party status.

In Gorton and Denton, revealingly, neither of the old parties finished first or second—a first in the entire modern history of by-elections. But the devastation of the Conservatives, whose national popularity lags far behind Reform, was much more pronounced than for Labour, which, in national polls, still runs slightly above the Greens. The Greens may have won Gorton and Denton, a traditionally leftist constituency with a large Muslim population alienated from Labour, but the nation seems to want Reform.