Newsletter #69: Predictions for 2026

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Good morning,

As promised, today we will be taking a break from rolling coverage to make some predictions on what the coming year has in store.

This newsletter’s agenda: Predictions for 2026 (free/paid)

Predictions for 2026

Prediction #1: Keir Starmer will no longer be Prime Minister on Jan 1, 2027

At the beginning of 2025, Keir Starmer had plummeted almost ten points in the polls from the start of his Premiership. Reeling from a deeply unpopular budget and speculation over the future of his Chancellor’s career, he kicked off the year with international condemnation over his handling of the grooming gang scandal. At the beginning of 2026, one wonders what Sir Keir would give to return to such heights of popularity.

Predictions of Starmer’s demise, which have gradually risen in pitch over the course of the past year and especially since September, have been tempered with the wisdom that the Labour party, unlike the Conservatives, do not remove their leaders. Whilst this caution certainly has some validity, I’m not entirely sure how reliable it is - after all, Labour has only once been in government long enough for discussion of a change in leadership to take hold (at least in normal circumstances), and in that period they not only removed a leader, but the most electorally successful leader the party has ever seen.

Electorally successful Starmer is not. In May, he will lead the party to a historic defeat. Labour hold the vast majority of council seats that will be up for election, and last contested these seats in 2022 during the height of partygate. They have a great deal to lose, and lose they will: in Newcastle, Manchester, West Yorkshire, and the West Midlands to Reform; in London and Birmingham to Greens and Independents. Worse than all of this, in all likelihood he will ensure that Labour comes third in both Wales and Scotland, behind the Nationalists and Reform.

A Prime Minister can survive a bad set of local elections. What cannot be survived is the failure, time and time again, to win a single political victory. Every major event of 2025 was bad news for Starmer and his government. Every decision taken was unpopular, and with almost every attempt to reclaim the agenda he has been forced into U-turns by his own backbenchers. Watching Starmer’s premiership feels like being forced to view the most ridiculous and contrived comedy of errors on repeat.

Throughout the past year, Labour MPs have been hard at work developing an explanation for their abject failure in government. At first, they suspected that they were in fact doing a perfectly good job, and blamed the government communications department for failing to inform the public of this fact. For a while, they settled on Rachel Reeves and her steadfast refusal to allow a nice currency crisis. Then, it was the perfidious influence of Morgan McSweeney and the cult of ‘Blue Labour’. They don’t offer these explanations any more, because they have settled on one far simpler; Keir Starmer is not up to the job.

Conviction in that hypothesis will only grow as the new year brings new opportunities for Starmer to squander, because it is fundamentally and obviously true. There is no way back from this realisation. In private conversations, not even Starmer’s allies pretend to envision one. The only areas in which the government has achieved some success, under its own terms, are on immigration and the US relationship - both of which have only made them less popular among their own core supporters. What has resulted from this is a strange kind of hostage situation, in which Starmer’s only defence is to promise a drawn-out leadership contest and remind his party of the previous government to suggest that changing leaders can bring more damage than keeping them despite their overwhelming unpopularity.

Such a precarious balance cannot be maintained for long. Whether it comes immediately after the May elections, or takes a little longer, that balance will collapse, and Starmer will be removed.

Prediction #2: The next Labour Leader will be…

An MP told me recently that the relationship of a political party to their leader is like a marriage. There may or may not be love involved, but what really underpins any relationship is a deal - he provides something for her; she provides something for him. There is, therefore, a certain fog of war which makes it very difficult to understand that relationship within a party that is not your own, just as it is very difficult to understand what makes another couple’s marriage work.

To stretch that metaphor perhaps beyond its original intention, the Tory party has always known precisely what it wants in a suitor - the ability to win (at least, as perceived by Tory MPs and members). The Labour party, on the other hand, has a somewhat quixotic approach to engagements. The extent to which it is happy to be a virtuous loser should not be underestimated, but it should also never be assumed that there is no desire among Labour members to pick a candidate who can win, especially when losing would mean allowing Nigel Farage into Downing Street. Predicting the next Labour leader is therefore a difficult task. Let’s have a look at each of the contenders.

Angela Rayner was the first name mentioned as a potential successor to Starmer, back when such talk was considered idle gossip about the far future. She remains a leading candidate to replace him, as the reigning parliamentary leader of the party’s soft left. Many in the party feel that her working class roots and unpolished manner could appeal to voters lost to Reform, whilst the leftwards pivot on policy that she would certainly usher in would appeal to those lost to the Greens.

Nevertheless, she has been badly damaged by the tax scandal that lead to her resignation from government last year, and whilst her appointment would bring a new political direction to the government, she does not at this point feel like much of a fresh face. At a time when bond yields are at record highs, electing the most left-wing major candidate in the race would be a risky move for Labour, and some among their membership recognize this despite dissatisfaction with the government.

Wes Streeting is perhaps the name most often thrown about today as a potential challenger to Keir Starmer — but not necessarily as a potential leader. This is because he is widely understood not just to be part of the Labour right, but specifically of the Blairite tradition: not a popular place to be in the Labour of 2025. It would be wrong, however to dismiss Streeting’s chances. In November, his net approval rating among Labour members was +19%, having climbed over the year, putting him solidly in the upper half of the cabinet. He has performed well in his brief, and mostly maintained support within the NHS. He is seen as one of Labour’s best media performers, and since late last year he has put across a clear pitch for his leadership without being explicitly critical (which, as Andy Burnham has shown, can blow up a campaign before it begins). His chances are better than many give him credit for.

Speaking of Burnham, whilst it may seem the Manchester Mayor has already missed his opportunity, he remains the most popular Labour politician in the country and one of the most respected within the party. Despite this, the fact remains that he is not an MP, and therefore ineligible to stand for the leadership. As much as the Labour left might hope to be saved by their prince across the water, Keir Starmer retains control of the NEC — which would have to approve any candidacy for a by-election. Weak as he may be, Starmer is not going to roll out the red carpet for his biggest challenger. As such, it seems any discussion of his chances were he to run will remain moot.

Ed Milliband is another name often mentioned as a potential leadership candidate — but whilst Labour members view him very positively, polling indicates they do not see him as a future leader. This is unsurprising, given his previous failure in that role. Milliband, for his part, has ruled himself out — although that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Perhaps he is angling for an appointment as Chancellor under a future Rayner government?

Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, both candidates for the deputy leadership, deserve a mention on this list — but neither has the profile to mount a serious challenge. Whilst positioned to the right and left of the party respectively, neither have a particularly strong identity with any one faction, meaning both lack the support base of a Wes Streeting or an Angela Rayner. Finally, we should mention Shabana Mahmood. Unfortunately for Maurice Glasman and Morgan McSweeney, Mahmood’s tenure as home secretary has rendered her singularly unpopular with the Labour membership. Despite what we and the country at large might see as her successes, she has no chance of taking the premiership.

So what is our prediction? Who will emerge as Prime Minister before the year is out? In our view, it will come down to the wire between Rayner and Streeting. Since we have to come down on one side or the other, we’ll play it safe and bet on Rayner — but in our view, it is a toss up. The contest itself will determine who comes out on top, and whilst Rayner can simply play to her left wing credentials, Streeting will put forward a far stronger vision for saving the party’s political prospects. To dismiss that he has a real shot would be a mistake.