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If you thought Labour’s first year in power was bad, here’s how things could get EVEN WORSE in next 12 months
WELL, it wouldn’t be a proper party without some tears, a massive hit to Sterling and some fake smiles and waves the morning after.
If this Labour Government’s birthday week was an episode of Yes Minister or The Thick Of It, viewers would have said the script writers had gone too far and the chaos was too much for the realms of believability.
If you were not pinching yourself last week watching power drain away from a PM with a majority the size of the moon, or the weeping Chancellor becoming a walking metaphor for Labour’s woes, then you really will believe anything.
Which made me wonder . . . what could this lot possibly do for an encore?
If you thought Season One of the Farce Show was bad, let’s have a look in the crystal ball at year two . . .
SUMMER
LAST year Rachel Reeves insisted “public services need to live within their means” and promised there would not be a repeat of November 2024’s blistering £40billion tax raid, saying clearly: “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.”
So when she failed to repeat that promise in the wake of Downing Street’s humiliating benefits capitulation last week, she teed up a long, cruel summer of speculation.
Taxes are clearly going up to fill yet another giant black hole in the Treasury sums, but which ones?
Petrol is currently pretty cheap, so expect the usual suspects to start banging the drum for a hike in fuel duty.
Logic would dictate that having peed off pensioners, farmers and employers already, only the most politically scarecrow-brained would declare war on drivers in such a spectacular fashion.
But after a year of failing spectacularly to read the room, who knows with this muppet show?
There’s talk — floated in Labour circles — of a wealth tax on assets over £10million, as if enough wealth creators haven’t already scarpered high- tax Britain.
And how many more memos will we get from helpful Deputy PM Angela Rayner on how to soak the rich more?
As she is finally given a long-coveted desk in Downing Street, I see plenty of empire building to come from our Ange.
Add into the mix not one but two visits from Donald Trump to the UK and there are bear traps aplenty ahead for No10.
With the Don in Scotland next month to visit his golf clubs, will football nut Starmer be able to avoid the offer made over lunch in the White House to play 18 holes?
And what could go wrong in September’s State visit, with lefty Palestine protesters and eco-loons already busy plotting an upset.
I suspect Starmer will also be hoping the President won’t forget his name as he did with the Japanese PM this week . . . referring to him succinctly as “Mr Japan”.
AUTUMN
PARTY conference season just one and a half years into office with a majority that big — and an Opposition so divided — should be a walk in the park for Labour.
But with Starmer bleeding out voters to the right, as well as the hard-left with the resurgent Jeremy Corbyn movement, expect the membership and MPs to make their voices heard.
It’s a far cry from last year’s hitch-free gathering of the party faithful that was so stage-managed it would have made Stalin blush.
I’m not sure yet another speech about being the son of a toolmaker is going to cut it, but why break a habit of a lifetime?
Yet conference season will be a sideshow to two potentially catastrophic events this side of Christmas.
Starmer delayed a reshuffle
It’s pretty clear that Starmer delayed a reshuffle before the summer break as he works out whether he can keep his Chancellor.
It will be weighing heavily on his mind that no PM in modern times who has seen the second most powerful person in the government forced out has gone on to win the subsequent election.
But Reeves is running out of road when it comes to her fiscal rules not to increase borrowing for day-to-day spending, and not target the big three personal taxes.
Another raid on Capital Gains seems inevitable but that’s unlikely to be anywhere near enough to fill what experts say is shaping up to be at least another £20billion black hole.
But it doesn’t take a fortune teller to know that Reeves’ credibility will be precisely zero if she rips up the rules, which seem to be the only thing stopping a full-scale UK debt crisis.
The markets have just seen a Labour government incapable of getting even a £5billion cut through Parliament.
UK debt crisis
Meanwhile, borrowing costs remain historically high.
While Reeves is in a tricky spot, the Budget rests heavily with the PM too — he has outsourced his entire economic thinking to his next door neighbour.
Yet he could not tell MPs last week if Reeves was safe in her job as she sobbed beside him.
I would say it is 50/50 the Chancellor survives the year, which would make the reshuffle a maximum moment of danger for Starmer.
While it’s clear there are plenty of duds in the Cabinet who should be moved on, just ask Boris Johnson what happens when an already weakened PM tries to wield the axe, only to find it then plunged into his own back . . .
2026
HAPPY new year? I doubt it — especially if Reform continues its long march up the polling numbers ahead of crunch Scottish, Welsh and another round of brutal local elections in May.
With bookies looking at Nigel Farage’s insurgents possibly seizing control of executive power in Cardiff Bay and even forming the Opposition in Holyrood, it could be a bloody night for the Government.
While the Tories are eyeing May next year to solve their own leadership woes, if Labour has as rough a time of it as current polls suggest they might, we could well see Starmer on the ropes.
Scores of Labour MPs have wafer-thin majorities and have already made clear that they are willing to flex their muscles.
Is there a world in which Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t make it to his second anniversary in No10?
Even his closest allies and supporters say there cannot be many more spells like last week without it being terminal.
And who might be waiting in the wings ready to seize the crown?
As I said, keep an eye on Angela Rayner . . . and be careful what you wish for.
