Why we expect a lot of political fireworks in 2025

Politics in 2025 will be dominated by one thought: “Do things feel any better?”

The answer will drive much else in the political conversation. That is, the fortunes, mood, and attitude of the government, whether there will be a resurgence of the Conservative Party, and whether there will be a prominence or not of other people.

2024 was a year of remarkable success for Labor, but a landslide general election victory already feels like a long time ago as the new government inherits a troubling legacy and embellishes it with its own misdeeds. .

And we enter 2025 with quite the cocktail of ingredients: a flat economy, an impatient electorate, and an unstable world.

Donald Trump’s inauguration will take place in a few weeks.

An already unpredictable international landscape, from Ukraine to the Middle East, collides with the most unpredictable man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

The implications for trade, climate change policy, war and peace are enormous.

The prime minister has been saddled with the social media nickname of “Keir who will never be here” as he permanently enters the international stage, and while he claims it will have a direct impact on the world, he will inevitably return to the world stage again. It will attract a lot of attention. Millions of people live in the UK.

In politics, there are two unalienable truths that need to be repeated. That is, it is difficult to govern and it is difficult to mobilize an elected opposition party.

And perhaps never more so than now, on both counts.

Governing in the 2020s is a pretty ruthless task. Just ask the last Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, or Starmer.

I think there are two recurring sentiments among Lord Keir’s Cabinet about the first six months of the party’s government.

The first, which I can still see today when ministers look back on their work, is that after years in the wilderness of opposition, when they come to power, The excitement of being asked to make a decision.

But the second is frustration over too many mistakes.

One minister said he was fed up with lackluster presentations and communication, particularly on difficult topics such as removing winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.

Others are accustomed to understanding new work and making decisions from the perspective of themselves and their fellow ministers as administrators, becoming senior politicians in government and making decisions in a broader, strategic context. He admitted that it took him a while to step up.

‘We are no longer the political arm of the civil service,’ said one Labor backbencher.The learning curve for the new government, including the brutal sacking of Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s first chief of staff, shortly after I was leaked. He said this about: Private details of her salary.

Westminster politics feels far more competitive than the numbers suggest. Labour’s mountainous majority means it rarely feels like the Labor Party’s pulse is picking up the slightest bit when it comes to votes in the House of Commons.

But one of the clichés of 2024 is that, because this is true, Labour’s support feels broad but shallow.

They won a landslide majority with just 34% of the vote, the lowest vote share of any party that formed a post-war majority government.

Both Labor and Sir Keir have seen significant declines in opinion polls and approval ratings since their election.

So what happens to the Conservative Party and its new leader Kemi Badenoch?

They were more energetic and cohesive than you might imagine, considering how big the defeat was in July.

But privately, many Conservatives fear they have not yet reached rock bottom.

They are looking towards England’s local elections in May and are not feeling positive. Many Conservatives believe they will be set back in the election.

This is because the contested seats were last contested in 2021, a high point for Boris Johnson post-pandemic, so there are plenty of seats to lose.

Senior Tory leaders have told me privately that they believe Mr Badenoch has made a half-hearted start in his most difficult task.

Even her supporters admit that they’re relieved that she hasn’t done or said anything that would bounce back on them, given that she’s famous for getting in her shoes from time to time.

And they hope she will shake off the near-skepticism of journalists and be more active in making their case in the new year.

And they will need to do so. Because the words you often hear from Conservative MPs are:

reform.

Hearing the name of Nigel Farage’s Reform Britain party sends a shiver down the spine of many Conservatives, but Labor is not immune to its concerns.

Mr Farage and his team are upbeat and have spoken publicly and privately about their ambitions to win the next general election.

This seems like a fanciful proposal for an upstart power that can fit all five members of Congress into the back seat of a taxi.

But remember that in the general election they received 4.1 million votes, 600,000 more than the Liberal Democrats.

The problem the Reformers had was that their votes were spread out, rather than being concentrated in enough numbers in one place to win many seats.

In 2025, two figures within Reform will be worth keeping an eye on: Chairman Zia Yusuf and new Treasurer Nick Candy.

They embody the twin aims of Nigel Farage’s party: organizing and generating money.

The party plans to build passionate local branches nationally that could be the basis for winning more seats in local elections, devolved elections (to be held in Scotland and Wales in 2026) and the next general election. We are trying to build them all over the place.

To foster this growth, we anticipate a flurry of regional conferences in the first few weeks of the new year.

The Liberal Democrats had a corker of 2024.

They won beyond their wildest dreams and Sir Ed Davey now leads a party of 72 MPs.

Sir Ed remains determined to do politics with a smile, with his Christmas single being the latest example of this, as he seeks to take ownership of the issues of social care, young carers and health services.

The party is trying to maximize its exposure as a Westminster third-party body gives them – for example, Sir Ed recently appeared on Tell Me the News , such an invitation can be awkward.

In the coming weeks, he trumped the broader pro-European noise he was hearing from Labor by suddenly talking about foreign affairs and Britain’s potential future back within the European Union’s customs union. Don’t be surprised if you do.

The party is also optimistic about local elections in May, particularly in counties such as Devon, Surrey, Shropshire and Wiltshire.

The challenge for Sir Ed will be to transform the much larger parliamentary party into influence in an era of majority governments and noisy opposition parties.

The SNP had a terrible time in 2024. The resurgence of Labor in Scotland was so widespread that it was almost destroyed in the general election.

However, when I spoke with executives as the year drew to a close, their mood was not as gloomy as I had expected.

The dispute over Labor’s retention of a two-child cap on child benefit with the so-called Waspi Women comes as the SNP hopes to point out clear differences between them and Labor in the run-up to the countdown to the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. These are just two examples.

As we look ahead to 2025, Green MPs around Westminster have a lot to smile about.

First of all, when we talk about Greens, we say Greens in the plural – for the first time there is a plurality of Greens.

Their membership has swelled to around 60,000 people and they hope to increase their presence in parliament in May’s UK local elections.

Executives point out that they are currently part of the government in more than 10% of parliaments in England and Wales, and finished second to Labor in the general election with 40 seats.

While some of these areas are miles behind, others are able to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Labor over time and draw voters to the Labor left in their direction. There’s at least a chance. Let’s take a look.

And don’t forget Plaid Cymru. A parliamentary group known as the Independence Alliance, which includes former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Each party in Northern Ireland has its own concerns and campaigns, which can cause confusion for ministers both inside and outside parliament.

This is what politics will look like in 2025.

This may not be the year for general elections.

But I think it will be lively.