New year is the ideal time for Keir Starmer to drop his 'bad cop' act

Who is dreading the new year more: Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves? Most people look forward to the turn of the year as a chance that better things might be on the way, but it's hard for the UK's prime minister and chancellor to glance ahead to the next few months and expect 2025 to be any more fun than the latter half of 2024.

- Isabel Hardman

Reeves has a spending review where she is expecting ministers to find 5% efficiencies in their departments, so is nailed on for another 12 months of being the least popular person at the cabinet table. For Starmer, though, the misery isn't inevitable. Or at least, it might not be if he changes the way he operates.

One of the reasons Labour has managed to make governing look quite so hard is that both Starmer and Reeves are playing the bad cop at the moment. It started as soon as Labour came into government: the narrative about the £22bn ($28bn) black hole and the mess left by the Tories being worse than expected was essential to making the Conservative party's route back to power much longer. But by now, the good cop should have emerged. He hasn't. Starmer is still stuck complaining about the Tories, rather than enthusing about his own vision. Prime minister's questions is often a series of exchanges about which party is not quite as bad as the other, rather than Starmer confidently steamrollering a depleted Tory party. The most positive he gets is when there is some vaguely cheering economic news: something he may not be able to do very much of in 2025 if the economy continues to flatline.