It isn’t controversial to say that the Labour Party had a bad 2025, much to the advantage of its opponents like the impressive Zack Polanski, who has brought a fighting attitude to the left of British politics. He has bought this fight not with aggression, but with the promise of hope in our politics. Polanski has an understanding that people must see the hope of a better country to win against populists on the right.
Progressives of any worth know that hope is important. As a word though it is wishy washy, the type of word easily seen as cuddly and meaningless, a trap that the left easily and willingly falls into, to the annoyance of voters. Hope must therefore mean something, and mean something concrete and substantial. Hope can only mean that when we are promised by our politicians a better country, that we believe it. Politicians must not only promise a better country, but be believed.
This is because hope can only be inspired in voters by politicians when it is credible. Without credibility, voters are left with the easier politics of anger, with faith lost in democratic norms – they are left with the politics of instigators and victims. This is the politics on which Farage and the far right thrives.
It is on the issue of credibility where the politics of the Greens and the newly re-re-christened Your Party fail but where Labour, and only Labour, can deliver. Labour is the only force that can combine radicalism with credibility, especially under the disproportionate First-Past-The-Post system of elections in Westminster. Credibility is a necessary pre-condition for hope.
It is on the issue of credibility where the politics of the Greens and the newly re-re-christened Your Party fail but where Labour, and only Labour, can deliver.
But I do not say credibility to mean the destructive policies of the Post-Thatcher Free Market economic consensus – the politics that brought us austerity, tuition fees (at least south of the border), and the privatisation of public services that should belong in our hands. Labour rejects this.
It does mean though that we have to acknowledge that we depend on a globalised market economy, whether we like it or not. We live in a world where money, capital and goods move freely across borders irrespective of national decisions – where a national government that does not live within the reality of our interconnected world cannot sustain jobs and public services.
But government doesn’t borrow from itself as Polanski incorrectly states, instead governments borrow by selling bonds (‘gilts’). I’m not going to pretend those that invest in these are all ordinary joes trying to save a few bob, but the government does necessarily depend on them. So when investors lose confidence in the government’s ability to repay them, the government has to pay exponentially more to sell gilts and pay back investors – as shown when Liz Truss recklessly tried to give a massive tax cut to the very richest.
Here lies the issue of credibility with the Green Party – that voters all want excellent public services, but that the majority also worry about the state of the pound in their pocket and the amount they have to pay in tax.
Here lies the issue of credibility with the Green Party – that voters all want excellent public services, but that the majority also worry about the state of the pound in their pocket and the amount they have to pay in tax. Voters aren’t stupid and are very wary of the undeliverable, betraying trust rather than inspiring Hope – the populist seen to be the shrewd master of illusion rather than the purveyor of a better future. And here is the risk of the Greens, that what they promise cannot be delivered in reality.
The Greens cannot deliver on the promise of hope, but what about Labour? Few would say that this Westminster Government is one of hope even if it is one of credibility. But here lies the key, that this Labour Government does provide the necessary preconditions for hope and stands as the only force able to transform that into real change and now. Labour must build a new Britain that delivers a better standard of living: that is the only means to defeat the far-right.
It has laid the foundations that make this possible, with windfall and Capital-Gains taxes on the richest, with the biggest changes to workers and renters rights since Thatcher, with the end of the cruel two-child benefit limit, with changes to planning regulations so that our local communities can be transformed rather than left to decay – all underscored with the necessary economic credibility. All this is what makes the hope of a new Britain possible.
But Labour isn’t yet delivering that hope. Too many mistakes have been made with the political folly of welfare reform and winter fuel, cowardice over Palestine and trans rights, and being seen to continue the political chaos that has plagued British politics for the previous decade.
Starmer has shown poor, unpersuasive, and uncharismatic political leadership, where whatever piece of good done is overshadowed by a dozen mistakes, enabling Reform. The solution is new leadership, and Labour knows this – with near certainty there will be a Labour leadership election this year to bring a new Prime Minister. This need not be a point of shame but a chance for excitement and hope, particularly from us as young people, to build hope, the hope of a new Britain.
Only with Labour can we transform our country now, and we have the opportunity to lead it.
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