The 14 questions that will define British politics in 2026 |
Contemplating a new year always raises questions. Was there a Third Protocol? What was wrong with Oral-A? Can Keir Starmer survive 2026 as prime minister? It is the biggest question in politics this year and the fact that it does not have an easy answer illustrates the mess Starmer has got himself into over the past 18 months.
A few days before Christmas, a senior figure in No. 10 outlined how Labour’s high command still believes the winds will change for the party in 2026: a ‘virtuous circle’ of falling interest rates and inflation, more investment, growth, and rising confidence in the government among the public and the Parliamentary Labour Party. Another Starmer loyalist noted the old adage: ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn.’
For a clear majority of Labour MPs and a significant proportion of the cabinet, the favourite adage of John McCain, the failed Republican presidential candidate, seems more appropriate: ‘As Chairman Mao used to say, it’s always darkest before it’s completely black.’
In Labour, there was a similar gallows humour in evidence at the news that Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, had briefed the No. 10 team that 2026 would be the ‘year of delivery’ and the government has ‘turned the corner’. One veteran party strategist, convinced Starmer is a dud, remarked at a Christmas party: ‘If we have turned the corner, we have turned into a dark and forbidding street which looks pretty scary.’
Should Labour move on from their bland, uncharismatic, politics-free leader? Most Labour people I speak to think so. But that doesn’t mean it........