Hope will start to dawn in 2026

M aking predictions in politics is a mug’s game, particularly if those predictions concern a year ahead. It has famously been said that a week is a long time in politics, so a year is the equivalent of a geological aeon. All sorts of unforeseen events could transpire between now and the end of next year. But in the full knowledge that I could easily be proven wrong, which is certainly not the worst thing in the universe, I’m going to stick my neck out and make two predictions about 2026, one of which I am reasonably confident about, the other is really just a gut feeling.

So with those caveats in mind, my first prediction is that by this time next year, Keir Starmer will no longer be the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour Party, and Anas Sarwar will not be the branch manager of the Labour Party in Scotland.

It was always evident to any observer of the British political scene that once he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer would quickly become very unpopular. I said so myself in this column, so I got at least one prediction correct. What was far less obvious was the extent to which Starmer would destroy public support for the Labour Party. Even those of us, like me, who had a low opinion of Starmer to begin with, could not have foreseen just how spectacularly bad he’d be as Prime Minister. It turned out that Starmer is to being Prime Minister as GB News is to balanced and impartial broadcasting.

Starmer has presided over a collapse in support for his party, which has not been seen in British politics since the implosion of the Liberal Party in the early decades of the last century. Not so long ago, Labour was confident that Anas Sarwar would become the next First Minister; now opinion polling points to a historic defeat for Labour in May’s Scottish elections, with Labour facing the prospect of falling into third place, a long way behind the SNP, and vying with the opportunistic far-right ghouls of Reform UK for second place.

In Wales, which has been a Labour fiefdom for over a hundred years, Labour faces the likelihood of a historic and humiliating rout, losing control of the Senedd to Plaid Cymru and seeing the possibility of Welsh independence move squarely into the centre of Welsh politics, in the same way that independence has been the defining issue in Scottish politics for over a decade and a half. So much for Tony Blair’s recently published vainglorious boast in 2004 that Labour had “lanced the boil of separatism” in Scotland.

There is a boil in Scottish politics, and it’s the pus filled exceptionalism of Anglo-British nationalism, a boil which looks set to burst due to the pressure of its own contradictions, not the least of which is its inability to recognise that it is indeed nationalist and separatist, separating the UK from Europe, and indeed from common sense, reality, and basic humanity, while acting as an agent for the interests of the rich and powerful. Anglo-British nationalism cannot solve the problems its far-right proponents claim it’s the answer to, because it is a creature of the same forces which created those problems in the first place. However, it’s well funded by the super-rich in whose interests it operates and enjoys the benefit of an extensive media ecosystem from which left-wing voices are largely excluded.

Labour is also facing a series of local elections in England on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections. The question is not whether Labour will do badly; the question is just how badly Labour will do. In May next year, Starmer will pay the electoral price for selling out the soul of what was once a left-wing party and surrendering it to the corporate interests which it was originally founded to protect working-class people from. That’s the real betrayal which so-called Blue Labour represents. There is already considerable disquiet on Labour’s back benches with the gross ineptitude of Starmer’s leadership.

This ineptitude is not purely presentational, as Starmer’s apologists would like to believe; it shows itself in Starmer’s policy choices. His assault on the disabled is unconscionable from a supposedly Labour government and has predictably failed to placate a right wing whose politics are based on blaming the poor for the sins of the rich. His attacks on immigration have not silenced the far-right they have emboldened and empowered it. His equivocation on closer ties with the EU has only encouraged the right to go even further.

We are now facing the hitherto unthinkable prospect that the next British Government will take the UK out of the ECHR, opening the way to a bonfire of civil rights and liberties and the reintroduction of the death penalty. Yet from former human rights lawyer Starmer, there has not been a single word in defence of the ECHR.

All the simmering discontent with Starmer within the Labour party will come to a head following May’s elections, when the party is likely to suffer a defeat of such magnitude that there can be no recovery from, and Labour will be staring at the prospect of a historic annihilation at the next Westminster general election.

The events of May 2026 will force the self-preservation instincts of Labour b to kick in, and the current simmering of discontent with Starmer and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney – a man who is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is – to kick in, and Starmer will be left to deal with open rebellion within the Parliamentary Labour Party. In Scotland the hapless Anas Sarwar will be left to carry the can for Labour’s defeat in Scotland and he’ll be removed in an internal putsch similar to the one which installed him in the first place.

Unlike the Tories, Labour lacks a clear mechanism for removing a party leader, so following a summer of rebellions which increase in strength and frequency, Starmer will see that the writing is on the wall and will stand down as party leader by next year’s Labour party conference. If he does not, he’ll preside over a party conference over which he’s clearly lost control. One way or another, I can’t see him surviving until the end of next year.

My second prediction concerns across the pond. Opinion polls strongly suggest that US Republicans are facing a political hammering in the midterm elections. Trump is growing increasingly erratic, indeed, deranged, and he won’t accept defeat gracefully, or at all. His mental and physical decline is accelerating, and while I’m less confident in this prediction than I am in predicting Starmer’s defenestration in 2026, I think it’s highly likely that Trump may not make it to the end of 2026.

There can be no doubt that Trump is suffering from dementia, on top of his pre-existing idiocy and malignant narcissistic personality disorder. Despite the best efforts of his sycophants to cover up his failing health, the point is rapidly approaching when this will no longer be possible.

I’ve been the primary carer for someone with dementia. Doctors don’t give a patient repeated MRI scans and repeated cognitive tests if they suspect a diagnosis of dementia; they do so when dementia has already been diagnosed, and they are tracking its inexorable progress. Trump not only displays many of the symptoms of dementia, confabulation, his peculiar leaning stance, falling asleep in public, nonsensical word salads, disinhibition, and aggression, but he also has a family history of dementia. His father’s dementia is well documented. To be honest, I don’t have an issue with Trump falling asleep in public; the problem is that he wakes back up again.

The bruising on Trump’s hands is not due to him shaking hands so often, a nonsensical and intelligence-insulting excuse from a White House that treats the public with contempt. For starters, the bruising is on both hands; no one shakes hands with both hands. As medical excuses go, it’s as plausible as that of the alleged sex pest formerly known as Prince that he is incapable of sweating.

The most likely explanation for Trump’s bruising and his regular disappearances from public view is that he’s being treated intravenously with a drug which can slow down the progress of dementia. These drugs, a drug called Lecanemab, are most commonly mentioned in connection with Trump and are given intravenously, which would account for the bruising on his hands and his frequent disappearances. None of these treatments cures dementia; they only slow down its progress moderately. Lecanemab provides, on average, 4 to 6 months of slowing in the rate of progression of dementia, after which it ceases to benefit the patient.

Sometime next year, Trump will reach the point at which his dementia is no longer responsive to treatment, after which his decline will accelerate rapidly. There are already signs that point has been reached. He has other health issues, he is overweight, sedentary and has a notoriously poor diet. By this time next year, if not sooner, the White House and the Republican party will no longer be able to cover up his lack of fitness for office. Given the trouncing the Republicans are going to experience in the midterm elections, many of them will see no advantage in continuing to prop Trump up. JD Vance, Trump’s successor, is as vile as his boss, but he has all the charisma of a well shagged sofa and will struggle to maintain the loyalty of the Republicans and the MAGA base in an America which is growing increasingly disenchanted with the craziness of the far-right.

By the end of 2026, we could see the back of both Trump and Starmer, a pro-independence majority in Holyrood, a Plaid Cymru-led government in Wales, and a UK whose end is in sight. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but the dawn will start to glimmer in 2026.

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▪ This piece was first published in Wee Ginger Dug and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 28 December 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.