We shall predict what shall happen over the next parliament. This might provide comfort, fear or interest to you depending on how you voted. We have analysed the fates of the last administrations and taken into consideration the moving of the Overton Window and the changing priorities of the majority of the population as well as the analysis of the vote-spread of the last election. We might not get timings right but there’s a lot to be able to predict. We cannot of course predict the future of international events, which might change things a bit. But here goes.
The Labour government will be formed and will have an eye for stability in order to maintain some kind of public support. Their honeymoon period (the period of goodwill) will be over within a month, or even within a week. They will need to pivot to the economy incredibly quickly and will introduce cost-cutting measures pretty soon. Though inflation is down there is a fear of a debt-cliff similar to the one France fell off recently. They will look at inflation and stagnation as the key targets to make them more popular after a less-than-hoped-for swathe of support during the election. Stability will help them but their approach will be deeply flawed (especially after the maiden speech by Chancellor Rachel Reeves wanting to make the economy work for Labour’s interests…oh dear) as they will use the state to try to grow the economy. The problem is that this is what the Tory government had been trying to do themselves with the ‘levelling up’ programme.
Labour will raise taxes. Following the autumn statement they will reveal how bad things are and they will have to raise taxes on things like VAT, Corporation tax and Capital Gains tax. They will introduce a wealth tax and a transaction tax either in the autumn or the spring. They will say that this will help fill the fiscal black hole. In fairness, taxes would have to rise anyway whoever was going to be in government. They will try to sell this by saying this would be temporary. Inheritance tax will most likely increase too. They will try to offset the rise in taxation with asking for an interest rate cut from the treasury which they will probably get, but this will probably make the Labour government immensely unpopular by Spring next year and some ‘buyer’s remorse’ will sink in by spring or summer next year for middle-class Labour voters.
Labour will repeal the Rwanda Bill almost immediately in a token gesture to their base. They will introduce more rigid blasphemy laws in a bid to eradicate what they see as rampant Islamophobia (contested). They will introduce many statutes to empower the police to investigate non-crime hate incidents and expand the possible hate incidents with an introduction of a similar law in Scotland where hate speech can be reported in peoples’ homes. As ex-intelligence officers Sue Gray and Ollie Robbins enter the Labour inner circle they will be able to make enough laws to essentially restrict large elements of free speech in a bid to ‘improve social discourse’ and allow for woke ideology to thrive in schools and in public places in a bid to improve their standing with their new core base (urban middle class graduate elites). As such they will ensure Britain remains in the ECHR. Labour will pass the Gender and Race Equality act, giving out government contracts on the basis of gender and race.
Labour will maintain mass immigration but wil probably bring it down by around 1/200,000 net. They will maintain a high level in an effort to pad out GDP but nothing will change here. Illegal immigration will remain high and Labour will ‘clear the backlog’ with mass amnesty as the new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has all but said that is what she will do. The new Border Force will do little.
Labour will put Net-Zero on steroids. With the zealous Ed Milliband as Energy Secretary we will see perhaps an increase of the Green Levy on our energy bills (currently 20%) and there will be a ban on oil drilling in the North Sea. There will be a massive push for renewables and petrol car bans will come into place in 2030 in terms of new sales. 20th speed limits will be put on many major roads in towns and cities and congestion charge zones will be implemented in most towns and cities all across the UK.
Labour will have to deal with a lot of strikes. Much like the 1970s, Trade Union militancy will increase as they see there’s a chance for pay increases until Labour. The teaching unions, doctors, nurses, RMT and train drivers will increase militancy to levels not seen since the 1970s. They will largely get what they want and this will increase inflation slowly but surely. If this goes exactly as it did back in the 1970s this will sink the Labour Party as it did for Callaghan’s Labour Party before. History does repeat itself especially when we don’t learn our lessons. As a socialist, Starmer has not learned the lessons of Blair (Social Thatcherism).
The General Election saw Labour winning with the lowest share of the vote for a landslide in election history in the UK. 80% of the country didn’t vote for them. They got LESS votes than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019. Their vote share stayed the same in England (by 0.6%), fell in Wales (by 4%) and rose in Scotland (by 26%). With the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Reform and even a couple of Tories teaming up we will for sure see a push for a change in the electoral system. Labour know without the First-Past-The-Post electoral system their monopoly in many areas of the country and their party would break up but the disparity between vote share and seat share the greatest in the history of UK General Elections the argument will be louder than ever before. Labour will dig their heels in and do all they can to avoid the argument as much as possible. They’ll probably succeed and this will make them so unpopular, but not enough to change their fortunes at least for a few years. As the LAbour party become more unpopular as the months go they might see some changes.
Finally, Labour will recognise Palestine as a state, rewarding Hamas for its actions on October 7th in a bid to head-off the unholy alliance between radical pgorgressives and islamists. Labour will maintain the social liberal international consensus but will struggle when the rest of the western world moves to the right. Labour will have a shrinking ideology set of allies as France, Germany and America move to the right and will push the nation-state as the champion on the international stage. Labour will retain the Globalist agenda but only the EU Commission will be very receptive to that. David Lammy, the new Foreign Secretary (we know…we know…), will have a really difficult time with the likes of Trump, Le Pen and Meloni to deal with and we might see some changes here in the liberal consensus on the international stage. What will happen in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Taiwan might throw everything into a tailspin. Labour will not raise the defence spending during peacetime, but peacetime might end up being a luxury in the coming years.
Keir Starmer’s government is likely to last a maximum of 5 years. We are predicting 3 because of the stagnant economy and a real push-back against their immigration and social policies much like in Scotland. Keir Starmer will be kicked out and a battle between Angela Rayner and Ed Milliband wil likely ensue, possibly with Douglas Alexander back in the ring too. This will dominate the last year or two of the parliament and Labour will go into the next general election in a slight amount of chaos.
For the Tories the coming leadership election will be brutal. Kemi Badenoch and Stella Braverman will enter the race for the right of the party and Jeremy Hunt and about 12 others will enter for the centrists. The remaining parliamentary party will want to get centrist Labour and Lib Dem voters back (in order to get the numbers) and so will ensure centrists candidates are given to the conservative members to vote for (they will be so scarred by the Liz Truss era that they will make sure a technocrat is elected). This leader will likely be a ‘steadying hand’ and so will most likely be a seasoned politician and will eventually make way in 2/3 years time for someone else. They will be a lame duck opposition for years and this will make them unpopular. There WILL be defections to Reform, with possibly 12 crossing the floor, but this depends on the discourse of the upcoming leadership election. We doubt it will be civil. We might even see a Tory defection to Labour but this seems unlikely.
The Liberal Democrats will not really do much with their 71 MPs and will struggle for relevance. This is their high watermark and they will do all they can to be relevant in the media as they try to show that there is a point for Lib Dem MPs in a parliament where the government basically does what the Lib Dems want. They will say it is because of pressure from their party but this will not really wash. In the next general election they will struggle and struggle hard, though not too much if the Tories remain irrelevant themselves.
For Reform, this will be really interesting. Nigel Farage thrives in a parliament and with 5 Reform MPs they will do well, not so much with parliamentary procedure but with professionalising the party. They are hamstrung by a sort of imposter-syndrome with many voters (they are untested in politics) so these 5 years will show their staying power, far better than UKIP back in 2015. They will see Tory defections. They will need to professionalise the party and fast in order to fight off the slings and arrows which most likely cost them about 7 seats in the general election (almost winning Yvette Cooper, the now Home Secretary’s seat for example!). They will fight By-Elections with a genuine chance of winning in Brexit-supporting Labour seats and will start to emulate the Liberal Democrats in targeting better, especially in the Labour heartland outside of the major cities. In this sense they will succeed as Labour moves fully to its new metropolitan graduate elite base.
Scottish Independence is dead in this parliament. They will most likely lose many MSPs in the Scottish parliament and Alba, the rival independence party, will start to fracture the vote and Labour will return a First Minister there. The SNP will become an electoral irrelevance as Alex Salmond picks up the pieces of the independence movement, with a possible resurgence in either the next parliament in 5 years time or later.
The Greens, happy with 3 more MPs, will struggle to make their case as Labour really pushes the pedal down on Net Zero. The green movement is struggling all over Europe and in Britain this will start to eat into the party’s support. They won’t really feature much and will be very locally popular in Brighton and Bristol. The adjoining climate protestors will step up their campaign against the state much like the trade unions and this will harm the Green Party vote. There’s not much else there.
Lastly the Muslim vote will organise itself much more. Starmer’s recognition of the state of Palestine will not be enough. Reflecting on the demands of the Muslim vote the clamour for a segregated dual community of Muslims will be desired and this will reach a fever pitch with the creation of a Muslim political party. This is a really scary development and Labour’s popularity will depend on their reaction to this.
In all, the next parliament is advertised by the short-sighted mainstream media as a stable parliament. From what we have described above it will be anything but that. The ‘change’ people want will not happen economically and socially we will see a constitutional change against free speech that will tip people over the edge as it has done with the ‘Trans debate’ and there will be a pushback against the legal restrictions on speech, expression and behaviour. Keynesian economics, given its last lease of life with the Labour Party who have advertised that they will ‘do it properly’, will have its final go as the NHS and social services continue to struggle to the point that by the end of the parliament the government will be begging private firms, the giant ones having stayed for mass immigration reasons and the sizeable ones having left due to the hike in corporation tax, to come to their aid much like Tony Blair did with mass privatisation of the NHS through Private Finance Initiatives. We may even see the IMF be asked for a bailout in the next 2 years as private firms abandon the UK for cheaper climbs. It will be difficult but some of the best pills have the bitter-est of tastes to swallow. We will get ours, and it will depend so much on the next alternative as to how long this parliament actually lasts.
We predict 4 years maximum. 2028 will see the next general election (and, in fairness, that seems quite generous on writing it).
Hold on tight! It’s going to be a far bumpier ride than people suggest.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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