PM's 2025: Polls woe, OAPs' fury and a US trade war!

SIR Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch may show little affection for one another when they face off at Prime Minister’s Questions but the duelling party leaders have much in common.

- David Williamson

For each of them, 2025 is a crunch year in which they need to win back the trust of a sceptical electorate.

The Labour and Tory leaders have to persuade traditional supporters that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is not the answer to the nation’s problems.

Sir Keir managed to pull off a staggering majority in the summer, with a paltry 34 per cent of the vote.

By Christmas, just 27 per cent of the electorate said they would vote Labour, while new polling suggests only around one in four voters would vote Conservative.

This decline contrasts with Reform UK’s rise, having scored 14 per cent in the summer election and now being backed by around a fifth of the electorate. If the polls are this bad for Labour just six months after their landslide, Sir Keir may be wondering what level of support to expect by the time of the traditional mid-term blues.

The May local elections should be a golden moment for Ms Badenoch to humiliate Labour and signal that the Tories have crawled out of their abyss.

The hitch is that the last time these elections took place, Boris Johnson was enjoying huge success – the ex-PM’s triumphant Hartlepool by-election was held on the same day – following the roll-out of Covid vaccines. If Reform UK takes swathes of votes from the Conservatives and Labour – potentially also winning mayoralties – there will be panic at the party HQs.