The theme of British politics in 2025 has been the assertion of the fun fringe over the staid centre. Nigel Farage and Reform have led all year in the polls and maintain a healthy lead over Labour and the Tories as the year comes to a close. In the final quarter of the year, the big story has been the emergence of the Green party, under Zack Polanski’s leadership. Both he and Farage know what they think and say it with gusto – little quarter is asked or given. We are at the stage where populists have captured the imagination and are also popular. Reform now has more members than any other political party and the Greens are hunting down Labour for the silver medal spot.
As one veteran of battles past, puts it: ‘We need a ruthless bastard, not a useless bastard’
By contrast, Keir Starmer looks like he’s having as much fun as the school geek at the prom, watching the cool kids get all the girls (50 per cent of young women now vote Green, while Farage is hoovering up the votes of young men). The prime minister’s dawning realisation that being in politics means you ought really to have some enjoyment of the political cut and thrust is a sight to see. His palpable discomfort and disdain for the acquisition of political purpose and the deployment of strategy, communication and narrative to achieve those goals has made his premiership painful to watch this year. Starmer’s preferred political weapons are the brief, the memo and the reasoned decision. But he is now under fire from those, inside and outside his party, who have shown they revel in the filthy business of taking a machine gun to a knife fight.
But the theme of politics over the last week has been a reassertion of political ruthlessness in Downing Street. The announcement that Labour would invite Tory councils to join them in cancelling local elections next May (which could lead to leadership challenges in both parties) invited justified cynicism. It looks, and is, an attempt by the establishment parties to clip the wings of Farage and Polanski. The pair will rightly scream that voters who want to deliver a bloody nose to the government are being disenfranchised. This will contribute to public anger about the ‘uniparty’ and fuel insurgent rage at the centre – but make no mistake, that won’t cause as much damage to either Starmer or Kemi Badenoch as holding and losing all these elections.
Similarly, the decision to announce, at the close of play on Wednesday, that No. 10 is scrapping the afternoon lobby briefing for Westminster journalists is similarly cynical (though journalists who think the public give two hoots are sadly mistaken). Anyone who attends these jamborees of platitudinous political propagandising knows they are mostly a pointless waste of time – that is, until they are an essential part of the democratic process.
All governments like to muck about with the lobby and talk directly to the public, even more so now that social media influencers are the communicators du jour. But when a government is in trouble is also the moment when the media, on the public’s behalf, can try to hold the government to account, to ask the questions they don’t want asked. Arguably the briefing system has long been due an overhaul, but don’t be fooled that this is an effort to create better government, it is an effort to reduce accountability.
It is also amusing to see Starmer’s cheerleaders applaud these changes when they would have been screaming blue murder and fascism had they been suggested by a Conservative or Reform government.
And yet, I can’t help thinking this is a big moment which will give quiet hope to Starmer’s fiercest internal critics. These are cynical, dirty, undemocratic, overbearing moves, ones which challenge the constitutional settlement of which Starmerites see themselves as the custodians – but they are also power politics at its purest.
Some in Labour think the only way to fight populism is with more populism – which explains why a good few have asked Father Christmas for the return to parliament of Andy Burnham and the return to cabinet of Angela Rayner. But there is also a school of thought that says what Labour needs is what one veteran of battles past refers to as ‘a bastard centrist’ – by which he means someone who is prepared to use every means at their disposal to win. It is the temperament of people who served both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown: do what it takes. As he puts it: ‘We need a ruthless bastard, not a useless bastard.’
Until now, Starmer has seemed disgusted by, perhaps even frightened of, the sordid business of political sausage making. But to mix this metaphor, his team now seems to have realised that making omelettes requires the ritual smashing of eggs with sledgehammers. Everything has to be tried in order to win. It remains to be seen if this is the final howl of a terminally discredited political establishment or the moment the centre began to hold against the funky flankers. But for months now most Labour MPs I speak to have regarded Starmer as useless. If he is instead committed to ruthlessness, 2026 could be more interesting than we thought.
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