2025 was a crazy year in politics. But 2026 could be wild

Goodbye 2025 - almost. It's not worth saying, "Goodness me, the news is crazy".

"Normal" retired many years ago. But which events of this wild year actually changed us, and our politics? And what might 2026 usher in?

As the UK hurtles towards the holidays, I've been asking contacts from across the political spectrum for the moments that boggled their minds this year, and those daring, perhaps foolish, but fascinating predictions of what might come next.

2025 was chock-a-block with events scriptwriters would have found hard to come up with.

There was the Oval Office showdown when US President Donald Trump seemed deliberately to shame the leader of Ukraine, described by one MP as the "maddest moment".

At home: a Labour cabinet minister, Steve Reed, being feted with chants of "build, baby build" and a mini swarm of activists sporting red MAGA-style hats as if, for a moment, Labour's Merseyside conference was like a Make America Great Again rally. You wouldn't have bet on such a surreal scene this time last year.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves crying on camera in the Commons chamber counts too - not just because of the human drama, but because, as one source suggests: "Global investors changed their behaviour as a result."

Yes, the second most senior politician in the land was in tears in public in the bear pit of Prime Minister's Questions.

Yes, the financial markets seemed to react, and secured her job.

The whole Budget set of decisions being published in error by the official number crunchers, the Office for Budget Responsibility, before the chancellor stood up to deliver… the budget, takes some beating as a plot twist.

And a new force on the left emerging under the Corbynista banner, but falling into disagreements with each other in spectacular style - perhaps sadly, for many on the left, that might have been easier to predict.

Don't forget, No 10 advertising its own vulnerability by proclaiming that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer would see off any challengers seeking to oust him – before any of the would-be challengers were remotely ready to come out of the shadows. Nigel Farage's insurgent party, Reform, claiming to have more members than the Tories and Labour.

Those crazy bits aside, time and again, insiders point to three factors of 2025 that have really changed where things are at.

Whether you love, loathe or shrug at the idea of Reform UK prospering, the rise of Farage's party - ahead in the polls for many months - has changed much in the last 12 months.

One former minister says, without question, the most important phenomenon in 2025 is the "rise of Reform and the death of the Tories".

Reform's success in the elections in May gave them power over billions of pounds in local government for the first time. And it put the frighteners on the traditional parties, pushing their policy agendas on immigration in particular.

Labour now walks and talks as if Reform is their main opposition, not the Conservatives, even though their leader Kemi Badenoch's performance has improved in the last few months.

With Reform's polling success comes increased attention, and more scrutiny.

How they handle that, not least allegations of racism, is a question for 2026, but the standard symmetry of politics of Labour v Tories is firmly out of fashion, for now.

Second, multiple sources cite a specific moment. Cast your mind back to the government's ambition to change the creaking system that leaves too many people on benefits without support to find work or improve their prospects. They also wanted to save cash for the taxpayer.

Labour backbenchers were so angry about the implications that after months of campaigning, ministers at almost the very last minute ditched that plan.

The government couldn't be sure it would win the votes, so it gave up, even though ministers say they haven't given up on making changes.

But for a government with a majority you can see from space it was an extraordinary state of affairs, the moment when Sir Keir's authority began truly to drain away.

One Whitehall insider agreed it was the biggest moment of the year, because "almost everything else has flowed from it - from then, the government was not in control of its political destiny with its own party since, and we wouldn't have had the budget we did without it".

For the country's balance sheet, the hoped-for savings disappeared, and with this, critics would suggest, any Labour ambition of saving cash from big changes to policy at home.

That decision set the backdrop for the late autumn budget which had a traditional Labour clarity, but asked firms and families to pay more tax.

One opposition source said the government has showed this year that benefits are "out of control", adding: "The decision to increase this at the cost of working people will have a consequence at the polls."

Even in the Labour Party the upshot is both welcomed and worried about.

One source called the budget "the most significant as they have dumped austerity at all costs and moved away from welfare cuts".

Another told me the whole affair is why Sir Keir, despite his huge majority, ends this political year with no guarantee he'll keep his job in the next.

If 2024 showed Labour could win but would have a hard time adjusting to power, 2025 has raised questions about the extent to which they were really capable of governing well at all.

Whatever has happened at home, 2025 has also been another year of hefty international political moves.

Trump moved back into the White House and really seems to have meant all of the things he told the world he believed in while campaigning.

Sir Keir, while regularly under attack at home, seems to have impressed the American president and some of his home audience. His moment in the Oval Office, proffering the invite from the King for a historic second state visit, "the most heart in mouth" moment of the whole year for some of his allies.

Brokering the most sensitive and the most important diplomatic relationship you have, live on global TV, can't have been the most tempting prospect for a non-showy politician like Sir Keir, who nonetheless, made a success of that moment.

Many insiders suggest the most dramatic and the most important factor of 2025 has been the behaviour of Trump 2.0.

Trump's increasingly insistent demands that Europe pays much more to cover its own defence rather than rely on America have shaped politics everywhere.

His moves to create a ceasefire after the conflict between Gaza and Israel changed the course of the Middle East.

And that's before we even start to consider his flirtation with the notion of creating an all-out global trade war, which hasn't quite come to pass.

2025 saw the UK political establishment get used to feeling constantly nervous about what Trump might do next, the perpetual guessing game of whether he really meant what he said, and what the consequences might be.

As we prepare to say goodbye to 2025, Reform's rise, Labour's woes and Trump's presence have changed our politics. So what will the next twelve months bring?

Predictions are by their very nature a guess.

2025's splintered politics, the current prospering of smaller political parties, the advance of Zack Polanski's Greens, for example, may not last.

The economic fug that has lasted for years might lift, slower inflation and interest rates cuts could shift that stubborn sense that the UK's economic fortunes are characterised by decline.

No 10 hopes its efforts to feed more kids before school by expanding breakfast clubs, cut back NHS waiting lists, provide more childcare and sort out the creaking asylum system could see not just the statistics turn their way but demonstrate that its choices might lead to better experiences for the public and, in time, some political reward - or at least an end to blame and shame.

Breath is already being held ahead of mega-May - a huge set of elections where some predict with confidence Reform will "trounce the others", a former minister says.

An ally of Farage says the "sense of disbelief and disappointment is even greater than it was 12 months ago", predicting huge success in England, and in the Welsh and Scottish elections in May too.

But an experienced Conservative source reckons the most important vector of next year is that Reform will "under-perform against expectations".

Plaid Cymru stopped Reform in its tracks at the Caerphilly by-election in 2025. Farage's rivals reckon voters on the left could come together in the same kind of ways in future.

Perhaps that's more hope than expectation, but it's not impossible that 2025's froth around Reform will subside.

The anxious wait until May's elections is linked to a very common prediction that would have been almost unimaginable 12 months ago.

You've heard the speculation about whether the PM is the right man for the job.

Even some cabinet ministers tell me the May elections will be followed by an attempt to remove Sir Keir.

Whether you think it would be crackers for Labour to try to get rid of one of the two leaders alive who have won a general election, or whether it makes sense to pull up stumps on a prime minister every poll suggests the public doesn't like, many Labour MPs are convinced 2026 will be defined by a "seemingly inevitable" change at the top.

Inevitable is a word used by many. But that doesn't remotely mean it is automatic.

One Labour source says "a lot of mad stuff is going to happen because everyone is acting really stupidly".

Downing Street is making significant efforts to build up the PM's appeal to his own party. Gags abound in Labour about how many MPs have been invited to the PM's country retreat for small talk and canapes.

But in the face of deep unpopularity there is a widespread belief that a bad performance in mega-May will mean the end for Sir Keir.

There is no consensus on who should be next if the PM was challenged.

And there is no certainty a hypothetical challenger would be able to oust him if he, as was provocatively briefed, tried to fight on.

Without doubt his leadership doesn't feel permanent, and that casts a genuine shadow over so much of what the government is trying to do.

But, even when politicians say, "We can't go on like this", a less-than-tasty status quo can still be more tempting than an uncertain road.

Whatever happens at home, naturally in our interconnected world what happens elsewhere - and most notably the whims and wherefores of the American president - will have much sway over everything in 2026.

As I write, European leaders are gathering their teams, fretting, planning, hoping.

Worrying that Ukraine's future is at risk, not just because of the original aggression of Putin's invasion, but because of America's attitude – the desire to end the war seemingly stronger than the belief in Ukraine's integrity.

But for the economy, for our continent's security, and the government's relationship with its most powerful ally, one senior official predicts "the most important thing will be the terms on which a Ukrainian peace settlement comes".

The costs to Ukraine could be costs to European security, and us all.

So as we prepare to say goodbye to 2025, 2026 might be even more eventful. It's not impossible the conflict on the edge of our continent will end, although any agreement to bring it to a close might just store up future problems.

It's feasible there'll be an attempt to get rid of the prime minister, and it's not impossible Reform and the smaller parties will grab more actual power. It won't be long till we find out.

Tomorrow, in our last programme of the year, we'll be joined by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the new boss of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson.

Thank you to you for reading, watching and listening, and Happy Christmas!