Scandal, folly and surprise: My political predictions for 2026

The crystal ball has been playing up recently. The prime minister himself made fun of its erratic behaviour on the night of the last election when he asked me: “Didn’t you say it was going to be a hung parliament?”

With that health warning, then – the value of these predictions could go down as well as up – here are my forecasts for 2026.

The Labour Party will go into a spasm after the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections in May. But because the results had been so intensely anticipated, and the speculation about their effects had been so persistent, the fallout will be inconclusive. One or two unexpected good results for Labour will confuse the picture.

Angela Rayner will hold back, with journalists confidently declaring that she is three, six or 16 short of the 81 nominations she needs to challenge Keir Starmer for the leadership. Wes Streeting will give interviews saying he didn’t shoot JFK, he doesn’t know where Shergar is, and that Starmer is the best prime minister we have at the moment.

As soon as Starmer seems safe, and the moment the press is full of long comment articles declaring that his negotiating triumph in Brussels means that he is likely to lead Labour into the next election after all, a series of unforced blunders will prompt renewed speculation about a coup.

Rayner will reveal the names of more than 100 Labour MPs backing her leadership bid. Not even England’s victory in the World Cup in July will save the prime minister.

In his resignation speech, Starmer will reveal his funny side, and people will be sad to see him go.

Streeting will then be released to launch his own leadership campaign, along with Shabana Mahmood, Bridget Phillipson, Lucy Powell and John Healey.

How Powell emerged as the eventual winner will be one of the puzzles that will baffle historians for generations to come.

This prediction is guaranteed, because all any interviewer needs to do is ask the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales what he meant by saying that the national debt is “not borrowing or a debt in any real sense”.

What is also guaranteed is that whatever Polanski says will only increase the Green Party’s popularity.

Incidentally, it should be noted that the recent rise in the party’s popularity had nothing to do with Polanski taking over as leader. It was a coincidence that he was elected just as alienated self-styled socialists decided that they had had enough of the Labour government’s disappointments. As long as the Corbyn-Sultana show was a cartoon fight scene, a cloud of dust with fists, stars and expletives coming out of it, Labour’s lost tribe was bound to end up on the greener side of the fence.

The upset of the year will be Labour doing better than expected in the Scottish parliament elections in May, and the Scottish National Party falling so far short of a majority that the Greens cannot save them. This will mean that Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader, forms a minority government, uncomfortably relying on Reform, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems voting to keep the SNP out of office.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, will be first minister of Wales after the Senedd elections, at the head of an anti-Reform alliance, including Labour and the Lib Dems. Campaign stunts by the Welsh nationalists, such as distributing brown envelopes of fake roubles to remind voters of Nathan Gill, briefly leader of Reform in Wales, who was convicted of taking Russian bribes, will fail to dent Reform’s advance. Boosted by the new proportional representation electoral system, Reform will form the official opposition.

Last year, Reform lost Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock and gained Sarah Pochin (by-election) and Danny Kruger (defection from the Conservatives), ending the year with the same number of seats – five – that they won at the general election.

This year, there will be more defections from the Tories as Kemi Badenoch’s recovery stalls and Reform remains 10 points ahead in the polls. Statistically, one existing MP is almost certain to be suspended by the end of the year, although it probably won’t be the one who admitted indulging in “banter” in the Dulwich College sixth form “that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some sort of way”.

Content creators will tour the streets armed with clipboards showing photographs of Ed Davey to shoppers delighted to be distracted from buying air fryers. “No idea who that is,” they will say.

All of Davey’s efforts to make the Lib Dems available as a leftist protest vote – being rude about Donald Trump and pious about Gaza – will continue to be of no avail. The Lib Dems will continue to be the party that went into coalition with the Tories and tripled tuition fees for too many of their target market.

Lib Dem MPs will go on appearing on current affairs podcasts, but no one will remember a thing they said afterwards. The party will continue to poll about 12 per cent, which is enough to hold onto the record number of seats they currently hold and even to gain a handful more, which will put them in a potentially strong position in a hung parliament.

In particular, one involving a politician, a driverless car, ChatGPT and Ozempic. It will be followed by a wider reshuffle than expected, which will descend into confusion as ministers refuse to leave their posts and will be dubbed “The Night of the Wrong Knives”.

At the end of the year, journalists will review the predictions they made for 2026 and wonder how they could get so many things wrong.