Santa will have a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for a change in the political weather and Kemi Badenoch would like an in with Donald Trump. Ed Davey dreams that Labour’s electoral troubles will get so bad that proportional representation starts to look appealing. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, wants to avoid what usually happens with him and keep his party from falling out.
Come the new year, all four leaders will have their eyes on May’s local elections. The 21 county councils, ten unitary authorities and one metropolitan district are up for grabs for the first time since 2021. Back then Boris Johnson was riding a wave of popularity after the vaccine rollout and the Tories won Hartlepool from Labour. It is only months since Starmer won back the Red Wall and secured a large majority. But his government doesn’t seem to be on sound footing. ‘It feels rather shaky,’ admits a senior Whitehall figure.
The Prime Minister is fast discovering that it is a lot easier to work out what people want – more money in their pockets, reduced NHS waiting lists and controlled immigration – than to deliver it.
Starmer’s task has become harder since his ‘reset’ speech setting out his six milestones. ‘Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,’ he said. But these are the people he must rely on to get things done, and his words have led to a backlash from trade unions and civil servants. The appointment of Chris Wormald – known as ‘Wormy’ by colleagues – to be cabinet secretary is the sort of conventional choice that has led many to ask whether the government actually knows what it wants to achieve. ‘Starmer needs some other people to pull his sleigh – it won’t be his officials,’ says one put-out mandarin.
Some in his party think that the PM is now in a worse position than before he gave the speech. As one Labour MP puts it: ‘He has admitted that there is a problem but doesn’t know how to fix it.’ There is the distinct possibility that the media will increasingly focus as much on the aims and ambitions of other big beasts in Starmer’s cabinet – Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner – as on his own.
The best he can hope for is that somehow, magically, there will be the growth that allows the funding of his government’s plans; and that Reform and the Tories will face turbulence of their own. The Liberal Democrats will be pushing for closer economic and security ties with Europe to ‘help protect the UK from the potential impacts of a Trump presidency’. The Tories and Reform will push for a US trade deal. Labour – for all the claims that there can be no trade-offs – will have to decide which way to go as Farage cosies up to the new president.
Conservative MPs, of course, have their own hopes and dreams. ‘We want more Labour relaunches,’ says a member of the shadow cabinet. ‘We want more of Keir Starmer’s wooden performances and technocratic demeanour.’ A member of the Tory leader’s inner circle says: ‘I have been genuinely surprised by how bad they are.’ So far, those around Badenoch have been buoyed by the Prime Minister’s travails.
‘Starmer needs some other people to pull his sleigh – it won’t be his officials,’ says one put-out mandarin
Starmer’s poor start was compared with Tony Blair’s at a recent shadow cabinet where the former Tory minister Francis Maude appeared as the guest speaker. He gave a pep talk on how to do opposition, offering a list of do’s and don’ts. ‘He said we needed to accept that it’s going to take time, that small wins are important,’ recalls one attendee. This series of presentations (Iain Duncan Smith spoke last month) has had a galvanising effect on the opposition.
The most obvious element that threatens to disrupt Badenoch’s plans is Farage. ‘What we don’t want is more Nigel Farage dominating the headlines,’ admits a shadow minister. With Reform overtaking Labour in one poll, Badenoch will need strong local election results in May to demonstrate that the Tories are still the main opposition. Her team are looking to compare the party’s showing with the general election result as opposed to 2021, which is the last time many of the councils were contested.
It’s not only Reform that she needs to worry about. Following a surprisingly good election result for the Lib Dems, Ed Davey – who was crowned ‘Disruptor of the Year’ at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards – hopes to take more votes from the Tories in the Blue Wall and West Country. Some 26 of the 32 councils up for grabs are Conservative-controlled areas, including in Devon and Surrey, where the Lib Dems have made significant gains locally since 2021. The Lib Dems plan to attack Labour with greater ferocity in the new year – taking aim at the issue of social care when Streeting brings forward plans to fix the NHS.
Similarly, Farage will from next month be ‘throwing his whole life into making sure we have the biggest breakthrough in May’ – on a tour of key target areas. With Zia Yusuf, the Reform party chairman, looking to build up branches and the party boasting more than 100,000 members, this is being seen as the moment to show that Farage could have a path to No. 10. ‘We believe the Tories will haemorrhage seats in May,’ says a Reform figure. ‘We make inroads, then we beat them in Wales. The narrative writes itself. We will be the ones with electoral credibility.’ Reform staff say they have had journalists trying to get hold of branded caps for workplace Secret Santas. They think this is an indication that Reform is in vogue. If Farage has some success in May, figures on the Tory right could start to campaign for an electoral pact between the two parties. ‘It’s how we crush Starmer,’ says a Conservative party figure.
It’s extraordinary that so much could be up for grabs so early in Starmer’s premiership. But as the return of Trump and the collapse of social democratic governments in Europe show, the sands are shifting faster than ever – and 2025 could well be a year that redefines politics.
What could 2025 hold for Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage? Katy Balls discusses with James Heale and Patrick Maguire on the latest Coffee House Shots podcast:
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