British voters are in for a relatively untroubled 2025, after the “Year of Elections” which saw a new government in the UK and major upheavals around the world, including the victory of Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated as US president for the second time on 20 January.
In all likelihood, Sir Keir Starmer needs not go to the polls for some four and a half years, thanks to the huge Commons majority Labour won last July.
August 2029 is the deadline for the next UK general election, by which time the second Trump administration will have been and gone.
The next elections for the Scottish parliament and the assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland are not due until 27 May 2026.
All of which means slim pickings for those trying to glean the political mood of the UK and a much greater focus than usual this year on what little voting is due to take place: English councils on 1 May. Making detailed sense of the picture will be a tough task for two vital reasons.
Comparisons with the last local elections in the same places in May 2021 will be tricky because the government’s English Devolution Bill has given some areas the chance to opt out of elections this year if they are likely to become part of the proposed combined single-tier “Strategic Authorities”.
Secondly, in 2021 the state of the parties in contention was very different. There was no Reform UK party, and none of its predecessor Brexit or UKIP parties to speak of. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were riding high. The Tories made big gains at council level, while Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens stalled.
The political map has been transformed since then. Today there are five Reform UK MPs at Westminster, four Greens and a record 72 Liberal Democrats.
The standard question in opinion polls is: “How would you vote if there were to be a general election tomorrow?”.
We all know there is not going to be one for years.
Besides, as beleaguered politicians always like to point out when the news is…
