Q1: No, we’re not having another election
6 January MPs waste nearly three hours debating a petition, which received three million signatures, calling for a rerun of the 2024 election. The petition was launched by a landlord from the Midlands who didn’t vote Labour, but felt that all the promises he didn’t vote for should have been fulfilled by the new government within six months.
14 January Tulip Siddiq resigns after realising that as City minister, her job was to prevent illicit finance, and this didn’t fit with her having lived in a London property owned by a trust based in the British Virgin Islands. The government replaces her with Emma Reynolds, who previously worked as a lobbyist for lighter regulation of Chinese businesses.
8 February The health minister Andrew Gwynne MP is sacked after having been found to have sent obscene WhatsApp messages to a colleague joking that he hoped an elderly constituent would soon die. The government replaces him with an MP who believes people should be able to self-identify as llamas.
28 February Anneliese Dodds resigns as minister for international development. The government replaces her with the chair of Starmer’s 2020 leadership campaign.
10 March The Labour MP Mike Amesbury loses his seat after being sentenced to ten weeks in prison for drunkenly beating up a constituent. The voters of Runcorn and Helsby replace him with Reform’s Sarah Pochin, who wins a majority of six and for whom a key political issue is “adverts full of black people”.
Q2: Flag season begins
14 April Craig Williams, the Conservative MP revealed to have placed a suspicious-looking bet on the date on the 2024 general election, is charged under the Gambling Act. The Tories’ defunding of the justice system finally pays off for someone: Williams will not have to stand trial until at least 2028.
5 May The Reform chair Zia Yusuf performs what will become the signature political move of 2025: having an opinion about flags. Yusuf actually manages to cover both sides of the Great Flag Argument (in which people are either annoyed at flags, or annoyed by a lack of flags), by saying that some flags will be removed from council buildings, then apologising and saying that if anything, there will be more flags than ever.
6 May No 10 declares there will “not be a change” to the policy on cutting winter fuel allowance.
29 May Robert Jenrick, who has a property portfolio worth several million, releases a video of himself berating people who have skipped their Tube fare.
30 May Reform announces it will accept donations in cryptocurrency. The company providing the payment services is Radom Pay Spółka Z Ograniczoną Odpowiedzialnością, based in Warsaw. The Reform donations now coming via Poland will not prevent Nigel Farage from later claiming that swans are “being eaten in royal parks in this country” by people from eastern Europe (he provided no evidence for this claim).
9 June Rachel Reeves declares there will, in fact, be a change to the policy on winter fuel allowance, which will be given back to most of the pensioners from whom it had been taken away. The attempted cut increases take-up of other benefits by pensioners, meaning the U-turn costs the government hundreds of millions of pounds more than if it had done nothing.
25 June The newly elected Reform leader of Warwickshire Council resigns after 41 days in office. He is replaced by George Finch, who at 18 years old now oversees a £680m capital programme and £1.5bn in assets. Finch quickly shows political aptitude by becoming embroiled in an argument about a flag.
1 July The government’s welfare bill passes a Commons vote, but thanks to Labour rebels it doesn’t work (irony alert) as intended. This leaves another vast bill for Rachel Reeves to pay. At PMQs the next day, Starmer is the last adult in the country to notice that Reeves, sat behind him, is crying on the front bench, a spectacle so grim even Kemi Badenoch almost forgets to be unpleasant about it. Almost.
3 July Zarah Sultana announces that she will co-lead a new political party with Jeremy Corbyn. The person most surprised by this is Jeremy Corbyn, who had not agreed to the announcement and demands she retract it.
24 July Sultana and Corbyn have now agreed to launch a website for their party, which refers to “Your party”. When people start referring to the party as “Your Party”, Sultana immediately de-clarifies: “It’s not called Your Party!” (It will in fact be called Your Party.)
7 August Rushanara Ali resigns after realising that her brief as homelessness minister was to prevent people becoming homeless, and this didn’t fit with her decision to evict tenants from a flat she owned and then re-list it at a higher rental price.
Q3: He’s a qualified hypnotits
2 September Zack Polanski, a former hypnotherapist with an embarrassing past (he was also previously a Lib Dem), is elected leader of the Green Party.
5 September Angela Rayner resigns after realising that as housing secretary, she probably should have known the right amount of tax to pay when buying a flat.
9 September The question everyone asked when Peter Mandelson was made US ambassador in February (“What could go wrong?”) is answered. Mandelson is fired after it is revealed that the UK’s top representative in America was also an associate of America’s most notorious paedophile.
9 September Tom Tugendhat points out during a Commons debate that many MPs are using the Americanism “I rise to speak” – because they are using ChatGPT to write their speeches.
18 September Sultana emails the 750,000 people who expressed interest in the party that is not yet called Your Party. Tens of thousands of people sign up for paid memberships. When Jeremy Corbyn finds out, he tells his new backers to cancel their direct debits.
Q4: Actually, maybe we are having another election
28 September Labour’s conference begins and is immediately overshadowed by the New Statesman, which runs an interview in which Andy Burnham makes his pitch for the Labour leadership.
5 October The Conservative Party conference begins and is immediately overshadowed by Gary Neville’s removal of a flag from some scaffolding. GB News fulminates over this event for a full week.
12 November Keir Starmer, who has in the past 12 months lost a chief of staff, three directors of communications, a principal private secretary, a parliamentary private secretary and a head of political strategy, reassures the nation that there is absolutely no backstabbing in No 10. He’s also “never authorised” anonymous briefings against cabinet ministers, who are also definitely not plotting to replace him.
26 November The Office for Budget Responsibility’s website accidentally leaks the Budget. The Chancellor still manages to surprise the House, however, by making a joke about the claim Polanski once made that he could enlarge a woman’s breasts with hypnotism.
29 November Sultana refuses to enter the venue for the inaugural party conference of her own party, which is not yet called Your Party, because members of other parties have not been allowed in. The following day, the party votes to call itself Your Party.
5 December Liz Truss arrives to deliver the year’s final political ignominy by launching the Liz Truss Show, a YouTube talk show in which she aims to “confront the deep state” by interviewing GB News pundits in a bleak little office. In the show’s first hour online, it reaches an audience of nearly 400 people.
[Further reading: Britain’s inquiry culture radicalises victims]
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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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