Rafael Behr: The Conservatives will see an ominous portent in the Peterborough result

Peterborough was a more delectable prize for Nigel Farage than any of the European parliament seats his Brexit party won last month. Missing the target will hurt. In the culture of British elections, the MEP poll is traditionally a forum of protest where Europe is not only the most salient issue but, by definition, the only issue. The bar to get into Westminster is set higher – and Farage has a record of failing to clear it. He has run unsuccessfully as a Ukip candidate seven times. That taught him caution, and the decision not to put his own name on the ballot for Peterborough proved sensible. Farage got to slink out of the count through a back door before the result was declared.

Labour’s Peterborough win shows its grassroots strength. But Brexit risks persist | Owen Jones Read more

Labour is celebrating the result as a vindication of its campaign emphasis on local bread-and-butter themes; a reminder that voters have more on their minds than Brexit. It is also a reminder that party machinery matters. Labour had the institutional memory (logged in databases) of where its voters were, plus the activist base to get them out. The Brexit party is still a largely virtual enterprise and, even with a locally sourced candidate, its engagement in the material wellbeing of Cambridgeshire is obviously recent, superficial and cynical.

But it is hard to say that Labour comes out of the whole episode with honour. The seat was vacant because its previous incumbent went to jail. Its newly elected MP, Lisa Forbes, was forced to apologise for having “liked” and commented approvingly on antisemitic material on Facebook. Its vote share dropped by 17%. But that is a statistical quibble when the Tories, Labour’s longstanding competitor in Peterborough, were crushed. They will see an ominous portent in Peterborough: the Brexit party splitting Conservative and hardline Eurosceptic votes, handing Labour the seat.

Identifying the problem doesn’t bring a solution any closer and the unavailability of solutions doesn’t diminish the seductive lure of the mythical, Midas-touch leader – the candidate who might woo voters away from both Jeremy Corbyn and Farage. The person currently mesmerising his party with that fantasy is Boris Johnson, and for that reason he might well be the only Tory MP looking on the result from Peterborough this morning with quiet satisfaction.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Caroline Lucas: Labour’s victory can’t disguise it – the two-party system is collapsing

Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern. Peterborough’s byelection was the third election in Britain in little over a month and Labour’s narrow victory can’t disguise what has been happening for a while: the two-party system is slowly collapsing.

As the former leader of one of the smaller parties, I should be celebrating this. But I am worried. Not because our current system is breaking apart, but because the rise of the Brexit party, coupled with the death throes of the two main parties, is putting our democracy at risk.

The Brexit party’s rise has been fuelled by stoking and then exploiting resentment about politicians. It has coarsened our political discourse and introduced a populist authoritarianism into our politics. We are on a dangerous path and we need to change course.

There is deep disillusionment over our whole political system. Too many people feel that political decisions are imposed on them. That’s hardly surprising when the first-past-the-post system smothers the opinions of two-thirds of voters. That is not how democracy should work.

Power needs to be redistributed. That means moving to a fairer, more democratic system of voting and Westminster giving back some of its powers to regions and local communities. Letting people take back control over their lives. Contrary to the claims of the Brexit party, simply leaving the EU won’t achieve this. I’ve suggested that citizens’ assemblies could be a way to break the deadlock over Brexit, but why stop there? If people are given the time to discuss complex issues, and presented with evidence, they can come up with solutions to the most contentious problems. It worked recently in Ireland on the divisive issue of abortion because the process had been fair, transparent and was genuinely inclusive.

Renewing our democracy won’t happen overnight; it will be an ongoing process, but it must be led by the people in a way that informs and empowers them. If we stay as we are, I fear that we won’t be writing pieces about the crisis in our democracy. We will be writing its obituary.

• Caroline Lucas is the MP for Brighton Pavilion

Tom Kibasi: The election punctures the illusion that Nigel Farage is an unstoppable force

The failure of the Brexit party to seize Peterborough and secure its first MP in Westminster undoubtedly slows the momentum of Farage’s party. It punctures the illusion that Farage is an unstoppable force: after all, he remains a very unpopular politician, loved by a minority of the electorate, but loathed by everyone else.

Yet it is still remarkable that a party that did not exist four months ago was able to come so close to victory. Labour will feel relief but little comfort. With a government in meltdown, victory ought to have been a formality. But instead, Labour had to fight tooth and nail for every vote. In sharp contrast to the European elections, the party deployed all of its campaigning capability, marshalling hundreds of activists from across the country. From Gordon Brown to Momentum, every possible resource was mobilised.

What’s more, the real lesson for Labour is the critical importance of its membership to its electoral success. The Labour membership went on strike during the European elections; would they do the same at a general election if the party remains at odds with their views on Brexit? Labour was able to scrape through this time because the right was divided. If the Tories now elect a no-deal leader capable of uniting the right, then Labour will be in serious trouble, with its vote fragmenting to Greens and Liberal Democrats.

Deep down, there can be little doubt that the Labour leadership knows this. If anything, holding on in Peterborough makes a change of position to backing a referendum to stop no-deal easier rather than harder. Politicians don’t like to be seen to respond to force, and this byelection result might just create the window for a decisive shift.

• Tom Kibasi is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice

Maya Goodfellow: This was a win delivered by hundreds of party and Momentum activists

There’s one image that never gets old: Farage leaving through the back door of an election count he expected he would be celebrating. But it’s especially satisfying when this self-appointed man of the people watched his party lose to a people-powered leftwing movement.

Putting all the resources, energy and time they could into the cathedral city seat, this was a win delivered by hundreds of party and Momentum activists. Demonised as entryists, maligned for being unconcerned with winning, it was the movement that mobilised to make sure Labour’s majority increased, even though in a crowded field its vote share might have fallen.

The Peterborough result spells out the dangers the next Tory leader will face | Katy Balls Read more

Labour can, when it mobilises, see off the far-right. The Brexit party’s response to Labour’s win, which drew on racist notions of national identity to imply people of Pakistani origin aren’t legitimate voters, is a reminder that that’s exactly what they are.

Had the Brexit party won – as pundits predicted they would – there would be days of analysis of how the party landscape is fractured, explanations would be written about the “white working class” and conclusions drawn about the viability of the left’s future. But regardless of the outcome, there would always be a limited amount we should read into one byelection. The far right is still a significant problem in the UK and Labour’s strategy is not without its problems, not least because it could have more robustly challenged anti-immigration politics in all its forms over the past three years.

Still there is one certainty: Brexit is not all that matters. As the climate crisis worsens, our education system, decimated by nine years of Conservative policy, falls apart, and migrants are treated abhorrently, the Brexit party, just like the Tories, has nothing but the status quo to offer. Labour’s win in Peterborough, against all the odds, is a reminder that there’s hope for an alternative.

• Maya Goodfellow is a writer and academic