2024 was a year that Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr would have recognised: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Yes, we had an awful lot of elections – more than half the countries in the world had at least one this year – but few of the results will turn out to be earth-shattering in their consequences.
That’s not to say they weren’t interesting; yet once the dust had settled, the landscape looked much as it did before the polling stations opened.
I suspect even poor old Syria (which didn’t have an election) will end up in another mess post-Assad.
Nigel Farage, no matter what he says, will be disappointed by the general election.
He really did believe that Reform would do much better than it did in terms of votes and seats: well enough to soar past both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and establish him as the leader of the official opposition.
That didn’t happen. He nudged past the Lib Dems by 14.3% to 12.2% (but gained just 5 seats to their 72); and came in almost 10% behind the Conservatives (with 5 seats to their 121).
The only thing that matters in elections is the final numbers. Five MPs in a parliament where the government has a whopping majority and you are the seventh party in pecking order doesn’t really mean all that much.
And it matters even less when it’s likely that the next general election is five years away.
Anyway, I suspect that Farage will get bored on the back benches; and when Farage gets bored media attention switches from Reform because its four other MPs have the collective charisma of Christmas dinner’s left-over brussels sprouts.
Had he run the Conservatives a great deal closer – or eclipsed them in votes and/or seats – his next strategic target would have been clear: a takeover and repositioning.
There is the possibility of a handful of defectors – mostly the people who have no prospects under either the Badenoch leadership, or her potential successor if things go wrong – but probably not enough to fuel collapse.
That said, if Reform makes a sort of game-changing breakthrough at the next local government elections or devolved government elections then the Conservatives might tip over into terminal meltdown.
I’ve interviewed Farage three times since 2014 and came away from each one with the same two impressions: he loves defying odds and expectations, and he wants to be prime minister.
I asked him about Enoch Powell – easily the most popular British politician from the late 1960s to mid-1970s: “He was never going to become a party leader or PM under the Conservative banner. He would have had to create his own party and reach an electoral base long ignored. But he chose not to go down that route. That was a huge mistake.
“Mind you, I don’t think he would have been able to speak to that base or working-class labour or Conservatives in a language they really understood.”
Farage has already proved that he can reach that base. With Trump back in the White House and Elon Musk offering support (which will probably come in the form of social media platforms and finance), Farage has enormously powerful support.
He also has his GB News platform and seemingly unlimited access to mainstream media platforms and newspapers.
But in the ongoing absence of some form of PR (which Reform is already pushing for), the key parliamentary breakthrough he craves is still likely to be beyond his grasp in 2029.
Regular readers will know that while not dismissing his chances, I wasn’t keen on a Trump return. Unpredictability is a useful tool in the armoury of a leader, but when unpredictability is the entire contents of the kitbag then all you are left with is predictability.
And when everybody recognises that simple truth then it becomes much more difficult for Trump to scare and bully the world.
I hope to be surprised by him – and in the right way – but I won’t be holding my breath.
As for local politics. It will be the same-old, same-old, I’m afraid.
Both the DUP and UUP were weakened in the general election; Jim Allister sprang a surprise (at least to those of us who weren’t paying enough attention to North Antrim); Mike Nesbitt has yet to get a grip again on the UUP; Claire Hanna will probably struggle to reinvent or reenergise the SDLP; the Alliance ‘surge’ didn’t deliver; and the executive has yet to learn the difference between gold-plated prioritising and lead-plated gibber-gabber.
I’ll end the final column of the year with the question I’m asked most often: ‘Will the assembly survive either this mandate or even in the long term’? Possibly, but not definitely. Definitely not.
Happy 2025 everyone. I hope it will be kind to you.