PopCon Director, Mark Littlewood, writes, "Our challenge for next year is to ensure that this proposition – the need for a full unravelling of the Blairite settlement – isn’t just part of a noticeable change in political discourse but becomes cemented as the centrepiece of the next government’s policy platform." 

If a week is a long time in politics, a year is 52 times as long!

A lot has changed over 2025 and as we head towards Christmas, it’s interesting to reflect on some of the things that have become “the new normal” which would have been considered almost impossible all the way back in 2024.

Overall, this year has been characterised by some things slowly drifting and a few others more dramatically shifting.

In electoral terms, the big shift this year has been that Reform is now leading in every opinion poll. We now only look at the size of the lead and who makes up the runners up places in what order.

Someone pointed out to me earlier this month that Reform were “only 7% ahead” in a recent poll. Any Reform lead of any size this time last year would have been considered unfathomable. Today, we seem surprised if they are not leading by double digits. I think the Reform phenomenon is much more deeply embedded and durable than the last time we saw a new party capture the public imagination (and you can see my article on why I think Reform could succeed where the SDP failed here).

Most of us have adjusted to this dramatic shift in public opinion and therefore try and spot minor changes in the wider mood and ponder whether they might point to a new trend emerging.

If you squint a bit at some of the polls over the past few weeks, you might just be able to observe a small tick up in support for the Conservatives (presumably based on Kemi Badenoch’s excellent recent performances at the despatch box). The Tories seem to be just about nudging back into the low twenties rather than being beached in the mid-to-high teens. A corollary of this is the question of whether Reform has finally hit its ceiling and is going to find it impossible to consistently break the 30% barrier. Given our electoral system this could prove to be enough to win a general election outright – but there wouldn’t be much of a margin of error and cards would have to fall kindly.

The electoral challenges for both Reform and the Tories in 2026 will therefore be whether the former can sustain and build its impressive base of support and whether the latter is starting a long slow march to political recovery or has merely experienced a dead cat bounce.

Associated with this will be whether another trend continues. Although only one Conservative MP (Danny Kruger) has defected to Reform so far, a trickle of Tories are continuing to traipse towards the turquoise army. Lord Offord will now spearhead their efforts in Scotland. Former MPs Jonathan Gullis, Lia Nici, Chris Green and – most recently – Ben Bradley have also switched sides. Ok, none of these folk can be described as “household names” but they all potentially help Nigel Farage considerably in converting his people’s army into something that starts to look like a feasible alternative government.

All of these ebbs and flows in public opinion and party allegiance matter enormously because it is clear that we need to maximise the chances of getting rid of this wretched government at the first opportunity and there is – as yet – no over-arching consensus on the optimal way of achieving this.

However, I think the biggest and most significant shift over the past twelve months has been in the policy diagnosis of what has gone wrong in Britain and what is needed to put things right. It is in this area that PopCon and our allies can claim considerable credit.

When we launched PopCon in February 2024, putting the case for a fundamental overhaul of Britain’s governmental and judicial machinery as part of a great constitutional restoration felt like a fringe activity. It was viewed as a very obscure and rather esoteric argument. Since then, however, it has become mainstream. Just this morning, for example, Reform’s policy chief, Zia Yusuf, put the case for a massive reduction in the power of unelected quangos and  legislative reset as a core part of how to improve our ailing economy (see below).

Our challenge for next year is to ensure that this proposition – the need for a full unravelling of the Blairite settlement – isn’t just part of a noticeable change in political discourse but becomes cemented as the centrepiece of the next government’s policy platform.

As Victor Hugo famously said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” In 2024 and 2025, we have successfully road-tested our core idea – often dubbed the “Starkey thesis”. We have found widespread support for it from both Conservatives and Reformers up and down the land. In the ghastly modern vernacular, we have successfully rolled the pitch over the past year or two.

But 2026 needs to be the year in which we positively prove that it’s an idea whose time has come.

Keep the flag of freedom flying!