Surely, then, there will be joy and celebration in the Badenoch household when Ronan Keating starts singing. If Labour are down, the Conservatives must, surely, be partying like it’s 2015? Well, no. There may be some muted cheer that Badenoch has survived the year as leader. Even that wasn’t a given at some points.
The Conservatives enter 2026 polling at 14%. In 2019, they won 44%. The road back will be long and windy, the kind of journey that would have made Tolkien weep.
Don’t worry, though. This is not a universally glum political landscape. There will be light, and there will be laughter. Jools Holland will not be hamming it up to an entirely unappreciative audience.
Presumably, Nigel Farage will be in his constituency home in Clacton hosting a bash with his Reform friends. Richard Tice is smashing out the vol au vents to an appreciative crowd, while Zia Yusuf regales everyone with the policies he believes will be big in 2026.
At some point, they will stop and look around. A sense of the inevitable blowing around them – their place in history is coming. 2026 is going to be their year, and they know it.
And yet, they’re not the only ones enjoying jolly japes. The Green Party are going places since Zack Polanski took over leadership in September. They have gained more than 100,000 members, they’ve often come third in the polls, and they’ve crowdfunded over £200,000. Maybe, 2026 will be theirs.
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The real test of 2026 won’t, however, come in the early hours of 1 January. That’ll be 7 May with elections across England, Wales and Scotland.
In Wales, there are full elections for the Senedd. Since 1999, it’s always been a Labour stronghold. There have been six elections, and Labour have won each one by miles and miles – in 2021 they won 30 seats while the Conservatives, in second place, could only muster 16.
There is a long way between here and there, but right now it looks like a very tight race between Reform and Plaid to win the thing, Labour finishing a distant third.
In Scotland, the Scottish parliament will be elected again. Labour will have some comfort in Scotland, as they’ve become quite used to losing there. In fact, the results in Scotland might look very similar to last time out with the SNP in firm control, Reform in second (taking the Conservatives’ place) and Labour in third.
Then there are about 4,400 council seats in England being contested. These are, largely, currently held by the Conservatives and the Labour Party; after these elections, that will no longer be the case.
Reform and the Green Party are going to carve up the country between themselves. The Greens will take, for example, almost everywhere in Central London, Reform will take almost everywhere in Outer London.
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What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Can Badenoch keep her job if it’s as bad as this? Can Starmer keep his? They would both be seriously weakened if they did. Both have successors in the wings, with Jenrick and Streeting eying up the top spots – although it’s possible they’ll face some competition.
How did we get to this point? It’s been coming for a while, that sense of disengagement and anger. When Gordon Brown called Gillian Duffy a ‘bigoted woman’, there were many people who felt like the entire political system was dismissing them as well as her.
It’s no surprise that four years later Nigel Farage led UKIP to win the EU elections – the first election to have not been won by the Conservatives or Labour since… well, forever.
People have been fed up and not felt listened to or represented for quite some time.
Then along came the pandemic, turning the volume up on mistrust. The damage done by Dominic Cummings’ eye test and the whole Partygate saga was huge… hurt, betrayal and anger.
The pandemic also drove up the need for public services and hit the finances so there was less to spend on those same public services.
As a country, we no longer trust the Big Two parties, and the Big Two parties balance the books in a way that people feel is fair and equitable.
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Unless Starmer can find something very quickly to address either or both of these things, he’s going to be having a very different party to see in 2027.
Tatton Spiller is founder and director of Simple Politics, an online platform that breaks down and explains what’s going on in the news in a clear, simple, accurate and impartial way.
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