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The Labour PartyMPmpUKMPMPYour browser does not support the element.By Duncan Robinson, Political editor and Bagehot columnist, The Economist hates two things, runs the old joke: getting its own way, and each other. In 2025, Sir Keir Starmer’s government may have a majority of 154 in the House of Commons; it may sit atop the world’s least constrained executive; it may have four clear years to bend the country to its will. Is it happy? Not really. Labour will spend 2025 fighting itself.Some fights, at least, are over policy. A scrap over Europe will be the aperitif. Backbenchers will grumble that the government should be less cowardly when it comes to Europe. The Labour leadership is so twitchy it will not even do a deal on student-exchange schemes. Labour’s entire electoral strategy will remain focused on a segment of Eurosceptic voters who switched from the Conservatives to Labour at the last election, leading s to grumble: what about the rest?A long-running row over the two-child limit for child benefit may come to an end in 2025, with a decision to abolish it—but not for a few years. More s will ask what the point of a Labour government is, if not to lift children out of poverty. At least planning reform, the centrepiece of the government’s strategy, is something almost the whole party agrees on.There will be a by-election. There always is. But one in the north-west, in a safe Labour seat, would cause mild panic if the party lost to a right-wing challenger from Reform . Questions about Sir Keir’s leadership would start to rumble. The prime minister will turn 63 in September—a few years away from his pension. Anonymous Labour types would be quoted saying he “looks tired”. Downing Street sources would hit back that the prime minister scored twice in the most recent game of eight-a-side football that the soon-to-be-pensioner still plays every Sunday.A tweak to leadership rules might then turn the Labour Party conference in the autumn to its favourite topic of conversation: itself. Rather than allowing its (quite left-wing) members to have the final vote on its leaders, the party will push to give only s a say. Framed as a way to keep out the radical left, it is anything but. Before the change, removing a leader was a gamble. This will make it much cleaner. With Sir Keir still in office, a not-so-subtle battle for succession will begin. A flurry of soft-focus profiles of cabinet ministers will appear in newspaper supplements; scruffy ministers will sharpen up; tubby ones will slim down, flaunting the gaunt, Ozempic-hollowed cheeks that are now the hallmark of the middle-aged and the politically ambitious.Arithmetic guarantees a certain amount of internal scrapping inside the Labour Party. There are 402 Labour s and only 100 or so jobs in government. At the same time, the typical backbencher has a slim majority of a few thousand. For many, a job in government is now or never. With Labour still polling neck and neck with an unpopular—and still defiantly right-wing—Conservative Party, jitters will begin. In a bid to assert authority, Sir Keir will launch a brutal reshuffle. It will not settle things. Old hands in cabinet will be sent to the backbenches to fume; overlooked backbenchers will become increasingly obstreperous. If Labour can afford to spend 2025 fighting itself, it is because the Conservatives, the main opposition, will be fighting everyone else. Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative leader, is a political pugilist, and will spend 2025 picking fights with such foes as human-resources departments (parasitical) and the National Trust (unpatriotic). Do not be surprised if she launches an ill-fated push to make “cancelling” people covered by hate-crime legislation. James Cleverly, a Tory leadership contender who argued that the party should “be more normal”, will bide his time.Sir Keir will end 2025 where he started, level with the Conservatives and leading a strangely fractious party, though he may be a few pounds lighter and with a suspiciously gaunt face. Challenger parties will continue to offer alternatives—from extreme-right to green to a new “technopopulist” outfit—that few seem to want. In Britain in 2025, if there is a political race, it is to the bottom. So, despite all the infighting, Labour will struggle on for three more years, and quite possibly five more after that.
