Keir Starmer will be glad to see the back of 2025 and be hoping for a better 2026. Not least that he is still PM at the end of it. That is by no means certain.
The received wisdom in the Labour Party is that May’s local, Wales and Scotland elections could be the tipping point. Labour is braced to do badly.
A leadership challenge will depend on just how badly, and the PM is alert to that danger. Which is why he has scheduled the King’s speech outlining his next Parliamentary agenda for just a week later.
Labour MPs would look a bit silly voting for that and trying to topple him at the same time. Expect Angela Rayner to be back in the tent by then, too, to shore up his left flank.
No one could have predicted the unpredictable events of 2025. There was Rachel Reeves crying in PMQs, and we still don’t know why. But it was enough to spook the markets.
Keir Starmer has carefully timed the King's Speech to try and save his skin. It won't work - Nigel Nelson
|Getty Images
Keir Starmer has carefully timed the King's Speech to try and save his skin. It won't work - Nigel Nelson | Getty Images
And they were shaken all about again in the lead up to her Budget when she did the hokey-cokey of income tax rises in and income tax rises out.
It didn’t help that the Office of Budget Responsibility published the whole thing an hour before she delivered it, though she can’t be blamed for that.
And more importantly, the markets were reasonably cheerful about her plans. The 2025 polls gave Nigel Farage’s Reform a commanding 10-point lead, and Jeremy Corbyn started a spring chicken party of his own, though it turned out to be a headless one with no leader.
The Greens found a new chief in hypnotist Zack Polanski and a spring in the polls as a result. A double-whammy for Sir Keir as Zack threatened his left wing and Nigel his right.
No 10 dropped its own clanger with a cackhanded attempt to see off any of the PM’s possible challengers and succeeded only in turning Health Secretary Wes Streeting into one of them.
Then we had the disastrous attempt to save £5billion on disability benefits dressed up as welfare reform. Labour backbenchers wouldn’t wear it, and Keir Starmer’s authority began to drift away.
He has been on the back foot ever since, which has helped Tory leader Kemi Badenoch find her mojo and up her game to prove that the Tories are not yet a busted flush.
The Lib Dems made curiously little impact despite having 71 MPs, which is why Ed Davey kept putting his body through torturous stunts to stay in the public eye. Yet they are expected to do well in May’s vote, nevertheless.
My Christmas card from the LibDem leader had a giggle over that. It shows an angel approaching the three shepherds with the words: “Yes, it’s a stunt, but it's got a really important message behind it.”
Elsewhere, Justin Welby quit as Archbishop of Canterbury and Angela Rayner as deputy PM, though for different reasons.
Charismatic RMT union boss Mick Lynch retired, former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon divorced, and US ambassador Peter Mandelson got his P45.
The Commons Strangers Bar closed for a bit after a woman had her drink spiked, and reopened with a security guard on the door, and the BBC ended up on a spike of editorial errors.
And in August, the homelessness minister resigned after increasing the rent on her home contrary to Labour policy. Donald Trump came to a banquet, but Ed Davey preferred to starve rather than go to it.
Making political predictions for next year is a mug’s game, but all being well, expect interest rates to keep falling in February, March and April.
April will also see a 4.8 per cent rise in pensions, a 4.1 per cent increase in minimum wage, the end of the two-child benefit cap and benefits up by 3.8 per cent, making a lot of people a little better off.
Caribbean countries will demand slavery reparations in November and won’t get them. But one prediction is certain. The boats will keep on coming, and the frustration of the British public will grow.
The best Labour can hope for to make it a happier Christmas next year is fewer of them.
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