labour

Reviewing my 2025 predictions

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Back in January, I made six predictions about events that would take place in 2025. So, seeing as there’s just a few days left in 2025, let’s see how I did:

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

This was a 2024 prediction as well. And it’s been accurate again – X has basically stagnated under Musk. Whilst I no longer use X, I’m not really aware of any new features; just a continuing decline as more extreme voices are amplified. I hope that, in time, X will just become irrelevant.

Donald Trump will be terrible in ways we haven’t foreseen

I mean, this is an easy one, but I think one of the worst things he did this year was his comments about Rob Reiner. Reiner and his wife were tragically killed, probably by their son, and yet Trump decided to criticise him. I try very much not to speak ill of the dead (or at least, not the recently deceased).

Trump and Musk will have a public fall-out

Yes, this happened. They seemed like best buddies at the start of the year, but their respective massive egos got the best of them. It hasn’t ended as badly for Musk as it could have done though.

Labour will do poorly in local elections

Yes, although this was an easy prediction. I was still surprised (and saddened) that Reform managed to take control of several local authorities. That being said, their general mismanagement of Kent County Council shows that they may not be a long-term political force.

There won’t be a General Election in 2025

Again, I was phoning it in a bit here. With Labour not doing so well in national polls but still having a parliamentary majority, I expect they’ll stay for as long as they can.

The overall situation in the Middle East will improve

We finally got a ceasefire (of sorts) in Gaza, although I think it’s a case of things not getting any worse rather than necessarily improving. We’ll see what happens in the medium-term but there’s a lot of rebuilding to do.

I think that’s a reasonable success rate, although frankly some of these predictions were highly likely anyway. I’ve now got a few days to think up some predictions for 2026.

Reviewing my 2024 predictions

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So, back in January, I made seven predictions about events that would take place in 2024. So, seeing as there’s just a few days left in 2024, let’s see how I did:

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

Remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022 that it would become X, the ‘everything app’? I predicted that this wouldn’t happen in 2024, and, so far, it hasn’t. I don’t use X anymore, although I keep my account live, and upon logging in to write this, the only new things I could see were some kind of job search, and Grok, its AI ChatGPT competitor. This is a far cry from apps like WeChat.

One of the few things that Elon Musk is actually good at is over-promising and under-delivering, so this isn’t surprising. But X was supposed to be able to offer all sorts of new functionality, including financial services, if Musk were to be believed.

Labour will win the 2024 General Election

Yes, they did. But any other result was unlikely, to be fair. It has been a rocky ride since then, with Labour front-loading their time in power with unpopular policies like the limits on the Winter Fuel Payments. However, with the next general election not due until 2029, there’s time to re-build.

What I didn’t expect was how well the Liberal Democrats ended up doing in the election. Their tactics of concentrating on seats mainly in the south west massively paid off, with one of their best ever results.

There will be a ceasefire in Palestine

Nope, sadly. We’re over a year in now, and fighting continues. The recent regime change in Syria is a potential bright spot though.

But the war in Ukraine will continue

Yes, sadly. But it’s notable that things are not going well for Russia, with forces being drafted in from North Korea. That’s because Russia is rapidly running out of people fit to fight on the front in Ukraine, as shown by its massive fall in unemployment.

Energy prices in the UK will start to fall again

They did, and then they started going back up again in October, by around 10%. Overall, Brits are still paying significantly more for energy than we were a few years ago, although there are at least a wider range of tariffs available now.

The UK will do okay at Eurovision this year

No, we didn’t really. We came 18th out of 25th, with all the points coming from professional juries and none from the voting public. I was hoping we would do better, with Olly Alexander representing us, but I don’t think it was the best song.

Trump won’t win the US Presidential Election

Oh dear, a big no. Honestly, in the run-up to the election I though Kamala Harris had it in the bag, so I was surprised and disappointed that she didn’t win.

So, overall, half of my predictions were (mostly) correct. Which isn’t bad, although clearly there were some that I wanted to be correct but weren’t. Oh well.

A General Election debrief

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An AI-generated illustration of an elephant dressed as a politician standing in front of a podium, surrounded by supporters.

So, it’s been around 13 hours since the polls closed last night, and we have a new Prime Minister in Sir Keir Starmer. Obviously, as a Labour Party member, I’m delighted that Labour have won the election, and with a sizeable majority too.

This is a quick, stream-of-consciousness blog post reacting to the results, and what I think it means for each party. I’ll be referring to these statistics from the BBC throughout.

Labour

Obviously this is, for the most part, a fantastic result for Labour. Having had a dire outcome in the last General Election in 2019, to come back and win a sizeable majority of seats is an impressive turnaround.

It’s not a perfect result; some polls in the run-up to the election suggested an even bigger win, and Labour has only gained 1.6% of the total votes compared to last time. And some seats have been lost, notably two in Leicester and one in the new Batley and Dewsbury constituency (which covers part of the old constituency of Batley and Spen where Jo Cox was assassinated in 2016). These both have large Muslim populations who have not approved of Labour’s stance in relation to the war in Gaza.

The limited swing in the popular vote suggests that people have not voted enthusiastically for Labour, but are voting against the Conservatives. Whilst it could be 2029 before we have another election, Labour may need to do more to convince people to stick with them next time. I believe Labour’s strategy has deliberately been vague and uncontroversial to get elected, and marks a break from the Jeremy Corbyn era (who incidentally retained his seat as an independent candidate). Now that they’re in power, with a healthy majority, I hope that they will pursue a more progressive agenda. Labour could definitely do more to reward those on the left who have backed them, especially around LGBTQ+ issues. Kier Starmer wrote an op-ed piece for Attitude magazine, to which its editor has had to add clarification based on Starmer’s comments about Trans* people in recent weeks.

Conservatives

The Tories have taken a deserved battering. After winning a majority last time, we’ve had two changes of Prime Minister, and a government that has looked increasingly out of ideas. Big issues like the state of the NHS, failing school buildings, universities approaching bankruptcy, and thousands of refugees fleeing conflict risking their lives on small boats in the English Channel, have not been tackled. Instead, we’ve had ‘culture wars’ and inaction.

No wonder this became the worst defeat in the party’s history for what it calls itself ‘the natural party of government‘. It wasn’t as bad as some polls suggested – one had the Tories in third place behind the Liberal Democrats. But they have less than 1/5th of the seats in the Commons now, with a net loss of 250 – more than two-thirds of the seats they were defending. And whilst Rishi Sunak retained his seat, many of his government colleagues did not – nor did previous Prime Minister Liz Truss. It’s also notable that Wales now has no Tory MPs anymore.

Liberal Democrats

As mentioned, some pre-election polls predicted that the LibDems would win more seats than the Tories, making them the official opposition. It would be very funny if that had happened, with both the government and main opposition formed of centre-left parties. This didn’t come to pass – the Tories didn’t quite as terribly – but with 71 seats, the LibDems have more than they did in 2010 when they entered a coalition with the Tories.

Whilst Ed Davey has some skeletons in his closet from his time as a minister with responsibility for the Post Office during the Horizon scandal, he ran an entertaining and well-targeted campaign. His various stunts brightened up the pre-election period, and by focussing their campaign on a number of core target seats, they’ve pulled off a great result.

Reform UK

Urgh. If I have to say the phrase ‘The Right Honourable Nigel Farage MP’, it’ll be through gritted teeth. On his eighth attempt, he has finally become an MP, representing Clacton-on-sea in Essex. Reform’s popularity surged throughout the pre-election period, and even last night’s exit poll predicted that they would win 17 seats. Despite more than 4 million people voting for them (urgh again), they only picked up 4 seats – three of which are seaside constituencies: the aforementioned Clacton, along with Great Yarmouth and Boston & Skegness.

If we had some form of proportional representation, then Reform would have won more seats than the LibDems and become the third-largest party. As it is, by fielding a candidate in just about every constituency, arguably they spread themselves too thinly. At best, they split the right-wing vote and helped Labour into power.

Green Party/ies

The Green Party of England and Wales have held a single seat in Brighton for a few years, but never managed to capitalise on this elsewhere. Until now, having won 4 MPs this time, and almost 2 million votes. That puts them on a par with Reform, so, theoretically they should receive the same amount of airtime. This is a really good result for them.

Workers Party GB

George Galloway’s latest vehicle has run into a siding, again. Having won a by-election in Rochdale just four months ago, Galloway managed to lose his seat, and none of their other candidates did any better. Nationally, they picked up over 200,000 votes, which is more than Plaid Cymru achieved in Wales. No doubt Galloway will pop up again in another constituency by-election in time.

A new Prime Minister

So, we have our sixth Prime Minister since our eight-year-old was born in 2015. I’m hoping for a period of relative stability – for context, I was 32 when my sixth Prime Minister, Theresa May, took up the post in 2016. Keir Starmer has promised ‘change’ – let’s hope it’ll be effective change for the better.

As for the rest of the world? I hope that Britain’s ability to move on from having a right-wing populist government will give some hope to those in the USA and France, who have imminent elections.

Some predictions for 2024

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An AI-generated image of some felt art of a fortune teller with a crystal ball that says 2024 on it

Now that the year has started, I’m going to make some predictions for the rest of 2024. If only because it’ll be interesting to look back in a year’s time to see what actually happens.

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

When the overly impulsive billionaire took over Twitter, he announced that it would become an ‘everything app’, like WeChat is in China. Essentially, he’s using his Twitter acquisition to realise his late 1990s dream for x.com, which would offer a huge variety of financial services.

But Musk also has a track record for over-promising and under-delivering. Look at the ‘full self driving’ mode offered on his Tesla cars, which, well, isn’t. His other firms, like The Boring Company, have also scaled down their lofty plans. So I don’t expect X/Twitter to offer much more than it does now by the end of the year.

I expect the core social media aspect of X/Twitter to continue to whither away over the year, thanks to declining user interest and lower advertising revenue. However, I still expect it to be around by the end of 2024 – I don’t think Musk is ready to throw in the towel and shut it down, or sell it at a massive loss.

Labour will win the 2024 General Election

We know that there will be a General Election in the UK this year, although not precisely when it’ll happen. Labour consistently leads in the polls, and has had some unprecedented by-election victories. I don’t think we’re looking at a repeat of 1997, when Labour won by a landslide, but I would expect a comfortable majority. How much change a new Labour government would be able to make partly depends on when the election is, but I’m not expecting the state of the country to massively improve by the end of the year.

Oh, and Sadiq Khan will win a third term as Mayor of London.

There will be a ceasefire in Palestine

Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on the 8th October has to be condemned, but Israel’s response has been despicable with thousands of innocent civilians losing their lives. I expect Israel to find itself increasingly isolated on the world stage and a ceasefire will be inevitable by the spring of 2024. Unfortunately, I can’t see it being a route to lasting peace in the region, but any reduction in hostilities has to be better than this.

But the war in Ukraine will continue

I’m less optimistic about the war in Ukraine, which has been largely at a stalemate for the whole of 2023. Russia still intends to hang on to the territory that it has seized, including Crimea, whilst Ukraine hasn’t been able to make major advances. Meanwhile political issues in the USA mean that funding for Ukraine to carry on fighting isn’t guaranteed.

Energy prices in the UK will start to fall again

It will be a few days before we get official confirmation from the National Grid, but I’m calling it now: 2023 was the year renewables overtook fossil fuels as the largest contributor to British electricity generation. In the 12 years I’ve been running National Grid: Live at grid.iamkate.com electricity generation from fossil fuels has fallen from an average of 25.1GW to 10.2GW, while renewables have risen from 2.5GW to 10.8GW.

— Kate Morley (@kate) 2023-12-31T12:14:09.211Z

In 2023, the UK generated more electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels, for the first time. Whilst UK consumer energy prices went up by 5% on Monday, I anticipate that the cost of electricity will start to fall as more renewable power sources come online. The newly-operational Viking Link Interconnector means that we can trade electricity with Denmark, and the biggest wind farm in Scotland is now online.

That being said, there’s an imbalance in the UK as most wind power is generated in the north of England and Scotland, but the highest demand is in the south of England. And our energy grid doesn’t have capacity to move this, which means that some northern wind turbines have to be turned off and gas-fired power stations turned on – costing money and contributing to climate change. However, there’s been a big up-tick in home solar installations like ours which may help, albeit on a small scale.

The UK will do okay at Eurovision this year

In 2023, the Eurovision song contest was hosted in Liverpool. The 2022 winners Ukraine couldn’t host it safely due to the ongoing war, and the UK came second – our best result for over 20 years. And then despite what I thought was a good song from Mae Muller, we came second-from-bottom.

For 2024, Olly Alexander is representing the UK. As lead singer of Years & Years, I have some high expectations. I doubt we’ll win, but I would disappointed if we’re not mid-table. Of course, we haven’t actually heard the song yet.

Trump won’t win the US Presidential Election

Trump will almost certainly become the Republican Party’s candidate for president, but with two states banning him from their ballots, his campaign isn’t going well. I know Biden isn’t terribly popular, and wish he had stepped aside for someone younger like Kamala Harris, but Trump has made it pretty clear that if he wins (and manages to get a decent Republican Senate and House majority) then he will take the US down a path of authoritarianism that will take a lot of time to unpick. And whilst millions of Americans seem to be okay with this, I doubt it’s the majority.

We also don’t yet know what impact Trump’s legal issues will have, or whether the Federal Supreme Court will overrule Colorado and Maine’s bans. I didn’t think Trump would get elected in 2016, and so I have been wrong about this before, but I hope people’s experiences of 2017-2021 will guide them to vote against him again.

So these are my predictions for 2024. We’ll see at the end of the year whether they happen or not. Meanwhile, have a look at some other predictions from Terence Eden and Diamond Geezer.

When Jeremy Corbyn came to Bradford

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Yesterday, the Labour Party launched its General Election manifesto. And it chose to do so in the building where I work.

We were treated to Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow cabinet, who delivered a presentation and answered questions for around 90 minutes. All in front of the nation’s media, with live TV and internet broadcasts. Naturally, security was tight, and access was limited. Only university staff and students, Labour Party members, and invited members of the media where permitted. This included heavyweight political correspondents such as ITV’s Robert Peston, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and Sky’s Adam Boulton.

I was unable to get a seat, so I had to watch from one of the balconies above with no view of the stage. Corbyn got a really warm reception, particularly as the majority of people there were university staff. The biggest cheers were in response to Labour’s policies regarding ending hospital car parking charges, renationalising the railways, and, predictably, ending university tuition fees.

From the university’s perspective, it was great to see a high profile event run so well. This was despite it having been planned at such short notice. But we have form here: seven years ago, then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown came to us to make a speech the day before the 2010 General Election. And the university’s first chancellor, back in 1966, was Labour prime minister Harold Wilson; this was something that Corbyn referenced in his speech.

I’m a Labour Party member, so I’ll be voting for Labour next month anyway. Brexit aside, I was very impressed with what Jeremy Corbyn promised us yesterday if elected. Sadly, that’s a big ‘if’; despite recent improvements, Labour are still trailing significantly in the polls. We’ll see what happens come June 9th, when the results will be clear.

All of the above is my own opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer.