2026
look ahead.

The plan has already been presented as 2026 being the year in which we “turn the corner” (in spite of the Prime Minister’s recently expressed dislike of three word slogans). Maintaining a rhetorical change from 2025, trumpeting economic growth is now less important than announcements that focus on the cost of living, public investment, and fairer economics.

However, this plan won’t be enough for the PLP unless they see an upturn in polling, which is unlikely to happen unless the public can see the benefits of this in their lives and recognise that the Government’s actions are responsible for this. This is made harder by an administration that is struggling to define what its core message is.

The key political moment will be the local, Scottish and Welsh elections on May 7th, which could well trigger a leadership contest if Labour’s collapse in those old strongholds, including London, are as bad as currently projected. To pre-empt this, the King’s Speech is scheduled to be delivered the week after these elections, with the Prime Minister desperate to move on quickly from the results.

Unlike the Conservative Party, who has a culture that enables leadership challenges, this is not something that Labour MPs are prepared for, particularly considering the inexperience of the majority of the PLP. Number 10 will be relying on this to give them more time to turn things around, and this could be successful in the short term. However, now MPs have scented blood, they will continue to rebel on issues that they care about with business rate revaluations and SEND reforms key areas of challenge in the coming months. Likewise, MPs will be emboldened by recent policy U-turns to be increasingly disloyal to the Government if they feel that it would build them credibility in constituencies often won on narrow majorities. Having already determined that the next election will be bad for Labour, new intake MPs are approaching their role through the lens of their constituency, with a strong focus on casework, intervening in local issues, and building their ‘local’ brand online.

Should a challenge come, and assuming that Andy Burnham can’t find himself a seat before May, the battle for No. 10 is likely to be between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and former Deputy PM Angela Rayner. The threat of a Rayner return is worrying the right of the PLP, which may cause them to challenge earlier before her tax issues are formally resolved, with Rayner supporters wanting to delay the challenge until 2027 to give her time to do that.

But leadership speculation within Labour isn’t taking place in isolation and public dissatisfaction isn’t aimed at the Prime Minister alone – the Labour Government is unprecedentedly unpopular. While the end of the two-party system has often been heralded, we are now seeing a situation in frequent polls that five parties are within fifteen points of each other.

Reform have entered the year with a consistent polling lead which they will try to maintain with the approach that served them well in 2025 – frequent announcements and press conferences, a mix of videos for social media that are snappy and longer form addresses to camera, and a broad selection of spokespeople from outside Parliament (such as de facto economy spokesman Zia Yusef). Reform’s challenge this year will be to professionalise rapidly, fielding capable slates of candidates in the crucial May elections and heeding the warning from focus groups that there is no plan beyond Nigel Farage’s orations and no team beyond the leader.

The Conservatives will continue to have mixed success as the Official Opposition, with key players spread thinly across multiple policy areas that they believe the Government should be pushed back on, while some members of the Shadow Cabinet have no public cut through whatsoever even on major areas of public policy. While Kemi Badenoch seems to have stalled the decline in polling, the party is still polling lower than the exceptionally low result at the 2024 General Election and there is a view within the party that any leader would be faring well when put up against such an unpopular Prime Minister. In 2026, the party will have to decide how to react to the changes within Labour and how to tackle Reform in the long run.

Away from Reform and a subdued Conservative Party, the Greens are the principal threat to Labour this year in the local elections, particularly in London and major urban areas. Zack Polanski’s brand of “eco-populism” has clear appeal to the left of the electorate searching for an alternative, with bold positions on wealth taxes, immigration and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The politics of the remainder of the year will depend largely on whether there is a successful leadership challenge within Labour and what that would mean for the direction of the Government. Will the PLP and membership decide that a more left-wing candidate like Angela Rayner is required, or will they blame the poor polling on communication and decide that Wes Streeting is the answer? Either way 2026 is likely to be the pivotal year in this parliament.

Yet this pragmatic shift sits alongside a careful recalibration of the independence question.

While the SNP has diverted away from making constitutional change the centrepiece of its appeal, Swinney has been explicit that an SNP majority would be claimed as a mandate for a second independence referendum. This balancing act reflects a clear electoral tension – recent polling shows that only 12% of Scots view independence as one of the most important issues facing the country, even as opinion on the question itself remains finely divided, with 52% backing ‘Yes’ and 48% ‘No’ in a hypothetical immediate referendum.

Scottish Labour’s challenge under Anas Sarwar is arguably more complex. Having enjoyed initial momentum from the 2024 General Election, the party has since stalled, struggling to establish itself as a credible devolved alternative while carrying the baggage of a UK Labour Government that is not universally popular in Scotland. Sarwar’s task is to convince voters that Labour can both fix public services and genuinely differentiate itself from Westminster – no easy feat in a crowded and volatile field with clear alternative options.

The most disruptive force, however, is Reform UK. Once regarded as peripheral in Scotland, it is now polling at levels that could deliver a significant number of MSPs, drawing heavily from disaffected Conservative and Labour voters. Its rise threatens to accelerate the collapse of the Scottish Conservatives and further splinter the pro-union vote, paradoxically making an SNP-led Government easier to sustain, even as overall support for the party softens. Whether Reform can translate protest sentiment into durable electoral support remains one of the election’s biggest unknowns.

Meanwhile, the Greens and Liberal Democrats are well placed to benefit from a hung parliament. Both are polling to expect gains and could prove pivotal in government formation, shaping policy on climate, social justice, health and constitutional direction. Healthcare dominates voter concerns, following closely by the economy and cost of living, while immigration – though reserved to Westminster – has nonetheless exploded into a defining campaign issue, altering both party positioning and voter behaviour.

Alongside the election, the January 2026 Scottish Budget will frame the contest, laying bare the constraints of tight devolved public finances, and ageing demographics. Taken together, these forces point towards a more plural, contested and unstable Holyrood. Scotland in 2026 is perhaps less about constitutional rupture and more about whether any party can restore trust, demonstrate competence, and govern effectively in an increasingly fragmented political landscape.

Either way, the Executive is looking at a £400m-plus overspend next year. There’s also a growing in-tray of problems ranging from hospital waiting lists to public sector pay parity pressures, and a prospective £2bn deficit for the region’s publicly owned water services. And that’s just a small sample of what needs to be addressed.

After years of Executive parties largely not being held accountable for public sector delivery – constitutional issues have always and will continue to dominate – there is growing frustration among the voting public. This time round, however, the scale of the problems is mounting and the Treasury is unlikely to come to the rescue with a blank cheque.

No politician wants to be left holding the parcel when the music stops, particularly as there are elections looming in early 2027. A cynic might conclude that a timely suspension could be a tempting option to ‘get out of Dodge’.

If ‘suspension watch’ has crept into the margin of conversation ‘election watch’ is already front and centre.

Although some way off, the 2027 election will be a double header for the Assembly and Local Government. That means 90 Assembly and over 450 council seats up for grabs. Every election is consequential, but this ‘super’ has focused political minds at an early stage, and the consensus among commentators is that the election campaign has already started.

This is supported by the publicly strained relationship between the First & Deputy First Ministers (SF & DUP). Alliance has complained that the Executive is a ‘battle a day’. There’s also increased pressure from both the UUP and SDLP on Alliance, with disagreements being played out in public. Everyone’s getting a bit on edge.

With the caveats that a ‘week is a long time in politics’ and ‘events dear boy, events‘, what themes are likely to emerge during the campaign through 2026?

As this is an unusually high stakes campaign, the likelihood is that the risk of a poor election will stifle radical thinking. No one wants to be brave every vote counts.

Parties will stick to what is safe and the election will be dominated by the usual Orange vs Green (and Alliance Yellow) split. There will be the usual intercommunal battles within unionism and nationalism.

That said, there’s growing disappointment with the Executive’ performance since its last reanimation from suspension. This has become a regular subject of public debate and after almost 30 years the public’s patience with the devolved institution is beginning to wane.

More than ever before, there will be more debate and scrutiny on bread-and-butter issues.

That might make life more difficult for the parties, but perhaps the positive thought to take is that it might, just might, represent the beginnings of more normal politics.

The challenge for Labour going into 2026 is looking steeper with each new poll – with a number of recent polls showing that even First Minister Eluned Morgan is set to lose her seat in Ceredigion Penfro, and the Labour Senedd Group could be reduced to as few as 10 MSs.

While the polls show the race is too close to call – we can be certain of huge changes to Wales’ politics after May 2026 with an expanded Senedd, a large grouping of Reform UK MSs, and even the first Green MSs likely to feature next May as a result of large numbers of Labour voters walking away to a proliferating party on the left. Many of the most influential figures of the devolution era on the Labour benches are also standing down; with MSs such as Mark Drakeford, Julie James, Jane Hutt, Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles all deciding to move on after May 2026.

Spring’s Welsh Party Conference season promises to be one of the busiest yet; with all Welsh parties vying for one final weekend in the spotlight prior to May’s Senedd Election – including Reform UK who are set for their first ‘traditional’ Welsh party conference.

The Welsh Government will be relieved to have got their final Budget of the Senedd term through following a deal with Plaid Cymru; which involved additional funding for local government, the NHS and £120m set aside in capital funding for the new post-May Welsh Government. In the remaining months of this Senedd term, the Welsh Government will be working to get their Environmental Governance Bill and Bus Bill through the final stages of scrutiny in the Senedd – and then all eyes will be firmly onto the election.