Hello and welcome to the New Statesman’s Christmas Special. And what an issue it is! It’s not every week that we get to publish an exclusive interview with Salman Rushdie and a previously unpublished short story by Anton Chekhov (yes, really). These, though, are merely the cheese and chutneys of our gluttonous spread this year. I will leave you to discover the rest, though I cannot resist drawing your attention to one particularly tasty entrée: the extraordinary story of Flight 2069, a near-disaster that might well have changed the world. Bon appétit.
This is my first Christmas Special as editor of the New Statesman. And with strange serendipity it is also my 25th edition since taking over – and the last of 2025. And so, with my quarter-century up, perhaps it is time for some reflection as we move into 2026.
Looking back to my first issue as editor in June, I am struck by the contrast with this week’s cover. Back then, we featured a mournful and reflective-looking Prime Minister contemplating the enormity of the task ahead. This week’s cover, though of course designed to be more fun and festive, points to the deteriorating position which the Prime Minister finds himself in this Christmas. There’s something about the image of Keir Starmer – part Macaulay Culkin, part Edvard Munch mid-scream, hands clasped to his face – that seems to capture an essential truth about British politics today. Perhaps we all feel a little like this.
In June, I set out how the Prime Minister was convinced that he could succeed where his predecessors had failed, healing the country through diligent and mature leadership of the sort that had been missing since the Brexit referendum. He was sure the country was not broken. “I know what my job is,” he told me. “To clear up the mess.”
The danger, I felt, was that if Starmer failed in this task – either because he could not manage the deep clean, or because the mess was far worse than he realised – he would not be remembered as the country’s first “normal” prime minister since Brexit, as he so clearly desires, but as “the last leader of the old normal, the final defender of the shaky post-2008 world before it was dragged into a new state by the figures now jockeying for mastery of the populist right”.
Today, I cannot help but think that, if anything, I may have underestimated the challenge facing Starmer. Even six months ago – though his troubles had already begun – it did not seem plausible that the Prime Minister would be facing a leadership crisis before the year was out. Yet, that is where we are.
To give you an idea of how things have changed, let me give you just one example. Back in the summer, as I was writing my profile of Starmer, I was at a party in Westminster when I bumped into one of his most senior cabinet ministers. When I asked about the Prime Minister’s fortunes, the minister declared they would “walk over hot coals for that man”. When I saw the same person last week, they were personally furious with the leader they had considered a friend, and felt it was all over. Fortune is a fickle beast.
In Jason Cowley’s final editor’s note before stepping down this time last year, he warned that “a notable challenge for any New Statesman editor is to know what to do about the Labour Party”. And so that has proved. The fact that we have to cover the Prime Minister’s struggles does not mean we wish him ill. Not at all. For the sake of the country, and the decency of our politics, we want him to succeed: to heal the country; to temper its anger, and to prove that it is not broken. We remain critical friends to both him and the government he leads, but it is clear he cannot afford another year like the one he has just been through. The country voted for things to change, and they must.
Let us finish on a final note of optimism, though. In Home Alone, the hapless baddies become complacent, underestimate their opponent and suffer calamitous (and, it must be said, life-endangering) consequences. Perhaps, lurking out there somewhere, is the Kevin McCallister of this government, armed with a box of tricks and a plan to save the day. Perhaps it will be Keir himself. No one expected it of Kevin. But whether it is the Prime Minister or someone else, there will certainly be an audience keen to cheer on whoever is prepared to give it a try. Merry Christmas to you all!
[Further reading: The sick youth of Britain]
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This article appears in the 12 Dec 2025 issue of the New Statesman, All Alone: Christmas Special 2025
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