Picture credit: Pilgrim Scales – Himalayas – Photographed by: Aditi Sen
What does the UK 2029 election look like now? Apart from a long way off.
After Sunak’s Slaughter I felt the Tory Party would regain a hundred seats, mainly from the Liberal Democrats, who got lucky with both their 2024 policy light campaign, and some surprising vote splits.
In that world I expected Starmer to lose an absolute majority, as Reform took over a hundred seats.
That was then
Eighteen short months later, what do I see now?
I don’t think Starmer’s unpopularity matters much : it is just the hyper-ventilating media age we live in. Nor do I see Farage getting an absolute majority. He is just too flaky, and the mainstream media too hostile.
Having said that The Economist’s current projection: if the election was tomorrow, is 318 Reform MPs. But then the SDP (who?) once led the polls too.
So, does Reform (in the real world) remain the third party? The Tories should still win more seats than last time, but not by many. Kemi must surely be an upgrade. Scotland is lost to both.
Complicating that is the need to distance yourself from your own likely coalition partner, to get as many ‘pure’ MPs as possible. That is an important fight for Reform; an existential one for the Tories.
That still leaves Labour (say 200), albeit with the loss of half their MPs, in Downing Street, but reliant on all of the Greens (say 30), Scots Nats (say 40) and Lib Dems (say 60) to get them over 325 seats. But a bigger party than Reform (180), although a United Right would be almost identical in size.
The Tory challenge
To have a sniff, the Tories must at least do better than last time, while those Celtic fringes could become very powerful. Those border battlegrounds will be of little interest to the old parties, but of great interest to their citizens.
If Reform is instead the biggest party (plus another 20), with Labour down another twenty, it is a whole new game.
Robert Jenrick claims otherwise. The old Tory Party, he says both expects to be down to 60 seats, (so about 60 more losses) and also believes those are now the key strongholds to protect. That’s about the current strength of the centrist wing (about half the Parliamentary Party). Is it enough to save the bridgehead, if the rest of the river is meandering away?
So, why are they so defeatist? Well, the Reform tide is running hard, has the momentum, increasingly the talent and it seems critically the money. In particular, money to spend now, not in three years’ time.
Some of that is an illusion, nothing like a Reform Shadow Cabinet exists and the Tory machine is still focused on sorting out the organisational mess left by accelerated downsizing. Kemi stood (many forget) on a platform to win the 2034 election, not expecting so rapid a disintegration of Labour.
Some of the Tory negativity is just recent memory bias, as once ultra safe seats got swept away, and the leadership was blindsided, talking in a delusional manner.
But what is the purpose of holding 60 seats (or come to that 120)? They have to go for more.
The bigger strategy, in opposition to Reform’s clattering, is to keep quiet, and let Farage self-destruct. Let Starmer mess it up, and build resources, then deploy them when the enemy is known. It copies Starmer’s route map back from Corbyn.
Changing course
But it seems Kemi became convinced that plan would be demolished by the May local election results. So, she became more strident, more caustic, and more popular. Yet, she was less confident of her personal support, more obedient to the sitting MPs and the old guard. Who knows if she was right, or indeed had a real choice?
But it was a timorous outcome: the old Cameronite guard became more visible, seized back key slots. Jenrick was being honest, when he saw no meaningful future in that path. Certainly, the Tory Centre/Left is now celebrating – battle won.
Jenrick also represents Newark, a clear Reform target, the epitome of a lost town, too far from London, and anywhere that matters – an outlier in this world.
No other choice*
If he wants a seat at Cabinet, Reform offers him the best chance. I don’t now see either of the old parties topping 300 Westminster seats in 2029.
He was the most popular shadow cabinet member for a lot of 2025. Any leader wants quality in their team. Any manager that gets top players poached, is failing. While if it really was personal, (which I doubt) she should not be leader.
Despite the walk on part by the arctic in the news cycle, Newark not Nanook** is actually the big news.
As I have said for a while, the current fiscal stimulus, falling interest rates, the fading of COVID, and a possible peace in Ukraine, are all positive factors supporting incumbency, if Labour can just cut back on the own goals.
I strongly doubt a course correction is now viable. Although if they are going to try, now is the time. Starmer can’t get less popular, without the introduction of negative Westminster seats.
Markets
Markets? I said last time, beware of January.
It has been a long time since we had a decent market collapse and there is still a lot of sector churn. The voices in favour of energy, commodities, industrials, real assets, and emerging markets, have a lot of history on their side, which in momentum markets, is as good as a fact.
But how long that remains enticing, against a cohort of tech fanatics, is not clear.
As ever liquidity (plentiful, getting more plentiful) and sentiment matter. The latter I am currently less sure of, markets feel a little skittish, melodramatic. I am inclined to wait, see what it is like after Easter.
*No Other Choice, is a great Korean film about eliminating rivals. Missed out on the Oscars. Better in my view than the one about Latin American dictators, The Secret Agent. Which scooped the topical nominations. Wonder why?
**Nanook was a polar bear, in ‘Nanook of the North’ a 1922 documentary