Chris Mason: Why 2025 promises plenty of political fireworks

Politics in 2025 will be dominated by a single controlling thought: Are things starting to feel better?

The answer will bring much to the political discourse: the fortunes, mood and behavior of the government, the revival or otherwise of the conservatives and the importance or otherwise of everyone else.

2024 was a year of great success for Labour, but even before their landslide general election win it feels like the new government took on a difficult legacy and embellished it with some of its own misdeeds.

And we’re heading into 2025 with quite a few cocktail ingredients – a flat economy, a restless electorate and an unstable world.

Within weeks, we will see the inauguration of Donald Trump.

An already unpredictable international background — from Ukraine to the Middle East — collides with the most unlikely man to ever occupy the Oval Office.

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

The prime minister, who has been dogged by social media skeptics that he is “never here” because he is forever on the international circuit, will inevitably turn his attention back to the global stage, while arguing that That it directly affects Pakistan. Millions of lives in Britain.

There are two irrefutable truths in politics that bear repeating: governing is hard and assembling an electable opposition is hard.

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

Governing in the 2020s is an unforgiving business – just ask the last PM, Rishi Shankar, or Starmer.

Among Sir Keir’s ministers, I pick up on two recurring sentiments about the party’s first six months in power.

First – and you can still see it in the eyes of ministers when they reflect on their work – after years in the wilderness of the opposition there is an excitement that they now have the power, and that they have to make decisions every day. called for.

But the second is frustration at too many mistakes.

One minister told me he was fed up with what he saw as a lack of presentation and communication, particularly with difficult things like paying millions of pensioners for winter fuel.

Another acknowledged that it took some time for him and fellow ministers to get used to being administrators, getting to grips with their new jobs and making decisions, being senior politicians in government and making decisions in a broader, strategic context.

“We are no longer the political wing of the civil service,” observed one Labor backbencher on the learning curve for the new government, which included the brutal ouster of the prime minister’s first chief of staff, Sue Grey. . Not long after his private salary details were leaked to me.

Politics in Westminster feels more competitive than the numbers suggest it should: Labour’s mountain majority means they will rarely feel the faintest pulse when it comes to Commons votes.

But one of the clichés of 2024, because it is true, is that support for Labor feels wide but thin.

He won an overwhelming majority with only 34% of the vote. Lower vote share than any party that formed a post-war majority government.

Opinion polls and approval ratings for both Labor and Sir Kerr have suffered significantly since he was elected.

So what about the Conservatives and their new leader, Cammy Badenoch?

They have been much more unified and united than they suffered in July.

But privately many Tories fear they have not yet hit rock bottom.

They look ahead, but not ahead, to May’s local elections in England, where many Tories believe they will go backwards.

This is because the seats being contested were last contested in 2021, a high point for Boris Johnson since the pandemic, so he has plenty of seats to lose.

Senior Tories tell me privately that they think Badenoch has had a mediocre start in one of the toughest jobs.

Even his supporters admit that they are relieved that he hasn’t done or said anything that could have affected him, given that he has some reputation. Putting her foot in her mouth over and over again.

And he hopes she will dispel the skepticism of journalists and get out more to make her case in the new year.

And they will need it, because the word you often hear from Conservative MPs is…

correction

The name Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s party, sends shivers up many Tory spines, and Labor is not immune to concerns about him.

Farage and his team are enthusiastic and talk publicly and privately about their ambitions to win the next general election.

It seems a fantastic proposition for a new party whose entire parliamentary party – five MPs – can sit in the back of a cab.

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

The problem with the reform was that their votes were spread out rather than concentrated in large enough numbers to win many seats.

In 2025, it will be worth keeping an eye on two men within Reform – the chair, Zia Yusuf, and the new treasurer, Nick Candy.

He shared Nigel Farage’s twin goals for his party – to be more organized and to make money.

The party is trying to build local branches across the country, local nerve centers of enthusiasm that are fundamental to winning more seats in local elections, by-elections (coming to Scotland and Wales in 2026) and the next general election. can be a hindrance.

Expect to see glimpses of regional conferences in the early weeks of the new year to try to build on that progress.

The Lib Dems had a 2024 corker.

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

Sir Ed remains determined to do politics with a smile – take that. A recent example of this is the Christmas single – and trying to own social care, young carers and health service issues.

The party is trying to show as much of its status as a third party in Westminster gives them – said Sir Ed Have I got news for you recently?for example, although such invitations can be awkward.

In the next few weeks, don’t be surprised if he talks about foreign affairs and the possible future of the UK within the EU’s customs union to the massive pro-European noise we hear from Labour.

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 turn a huge parliamentary party into influence in an era of a large majority government and noisy opposition parties.

The SNP’s 2024 was terrible: Labour’s massive return in Scotland nearly nuked the general election.

But speaking to senior figures at the end of the year, their mood was less gloomy than it might have been.

End of row The so-called Waspi women And Labour’s retention of the two-child benefit cap are just two examples where the SNP hopes to point to a clear gap between them and Labour, in the countdown to the Scottish Parliament elections in 2026.

Green MPs around Westminster wear plenty of smiles as they head towards 2025.

To begin with we now say greens plural when talking about them – for the first time there is more than one of them.

He has seen his party membership close to 60,000 and is hoping to increase its presence on councils in the English local elections in May.

Senior figures said they are currently part of the administration in more than 10% of councils in England and Wales and are second only to Labor on 40 seats in the general election.

In some of these places he is miles behind, but in others he is at least likely to capitalize on disaffection with Labor over time and sway Labor’s Left voters in his direction. Let’s see.

And don’t forget Plaid Cymru; The parliamentary group, known as the Independent Coalition, includes former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn. and parties in Northern Ireland, all of which have their own concerns and campaigns – and could cause turmoil for ministers in and out of Parliament.

This is with politics in 2025.

This may not be a general election year.

But I think it will be lively.