Things can only get better. After the year we have just had, it is very tempting to believe that this is true. Grant my new year wishes, and 2026 stands a chance of being an improvement on the misery that has, at times, seemed all-pervasive in the last 12 months.
Any speculation about the leadership of UK political parties must cease. Instead, leaders will concentrate on getting things right for the country and, in a revolutionary development, supporters will actually help them.
Sir Keir Starmer will never be the perfect prime minister and Kemi Badenoch could certainly not reach that level. The Lib Dem leader, Sir Ed Davey excels as a stuntman rather than a serious politician and the Greens’ Zack Polanski is somewhat removed from reality. A year longer in the job would not be a disaster and might even change them for the better.
The exception to this is Nigel Farage. Reform and its leader will be banished, immediately and for ever, never to be spoken of again.
Is it too much to ask that, with this achieved, political opponents might, just for 365 days, agree that they could also try to make a positive contribution? But if they could decide not to obstruct progress simply for the sake of being difficult, it would be much appreciated. Perhaps a ban on the televising of the House of Commons’ PMQs until it became a forum for the polite exchange of information rather than the current pointless shouting match would be a good start.
Secondly, the 2025 budget fiasco will never be repeated. In fact, the entirely ludicrous idea of an annual budget should be abandoned altogether. Making tax changes the source of huge speculation and concentrating them on just one day in the year is the antithesis of running a sensible economy. What the UK desperately needs is a much simpler tax system. Instead, the burgeoning tax code serves only one purpose: partners in second-tier accountancy firms are now collecting profits almost on the scale of the biggest international firms. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s latest moves will have given them an extra boost.
Those probably did not figure in the various short-term forecasts which influenced the last budget and are given far too much credence, despite their proven fallibility. Basing – or justifying – major changes in borrowing or spending plans on economic forecasts is just madness. The usual recitation of expected financial outcomes for successive future years is as much an exercise in self-delusion by successive chancellors as it is a realistic exercise. Yet it is dutifully reported and then serves only as ammunition for those who wish to proclaim the government’s failings.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have a government that took time to map out a strategy and, having examined as much material as possible, including the work of economic forecasters, decided what would be required to implement it? They could ask the opinion of those with relevant knowledge and, ideally, genuinely take note of what they said, but that would be very different to the current system of “consultations” which are merely public relations exercises and, because of that, destined only to create ill-feeling.
So the entire, expensive, budget day must die: what needs doing to make the economy work will just get done.
Suggested Reading
The empty theatre of Keminism
While 2026 is doing away with nonsense, please could infuriating announcements be permanently eradicated from our public spaces. “See it; say it; sorted,” is perhaps the worst offender: a meaningless jumble of words supposed to have huge significance yet generally broadcast to a mixture of travellers who are either completely uninterested or do not understand the language and, in either case, probably unable to hear the words distinctly enough to make any sense of the ungrammatical nonsense.
Neither does it seem necessary to tell those who are old enough to travel unaccompanied that they need to be extra careful when the weather is wet because steps may be slippery or, if the temperature is exceptionally high, staying hydrated could be sensible. Most passengers would prefer that the operating companies concentrate on making their services work properly rather than issuing fatuous instructions to their customers.
More positively, one crucial wish has been inching in the right direction. A better future for the UK will require improved relations with the EU. Rejoining the Erasmus scheme, the Christmas present that the government revealed just before the parliamentary recess, marks a step-change in Starmer’s determination to press on with trying to put right some of the worst damage inflicted by Brexit.
It is not so much the details of the plan itself which are important but his decision to go ahead, knowing that the right wing press would, inevitably, concentrate on conjured figures as to the “astronomical” cost of the deal.
The figures for Erasmus are irrelevant compared with the billions lost to the UK’s economy because of Brexit and, while Starmer continues to promise that the UK would not join either the single market or the customs union, getting as close as possible without signing on the dotted line is the optimum place for the UK to be. That he should move further and faster in that direction would be a huge benefit to Britain.
An end to the war in Ukraine – total defeat for Putin – must be on many wish lists, along with genuine peace in Gaza. And so many other war zones.
But, in the real world, there has to be one overriding desire: please will the United States wake up to the fact that, whatever the question, the answer will never be Donald J Trump. Nor Elon Musk, nor JD Vance.
In this interconnected world, the safety of us all depends on having good people in power. If that realisation could take root, getting to sleep might be easier in 2026 than it was last year.
Happy New Year!
