The New Statesman

Hello, I'm Anusha Kellyan, and you're listening to Daily Politics from The New

Statesman. We're not coming to you daily over the Christmas break because even news elves

like us like to take a little break, but look out for some special episodes that will be

dropping into your feed this

week. As 2025 draws to a close, I'm joined by our Associate Political Editor Rachel Cunliff

and our editor-in-chief Tom McTagg to discuss the six biggest stories of the year. So let's start

with Labour. Looking back at all of our written coverage, our podcasts, our videos, everything that

we've done over the past year, one topic really stands out from the rest.

And that is that Labour is in a very difficult uphill battle, that it is not winning.

In January, the IFG, the think tank, wrote that 2025 will be the make or break year for the new Labour government.

Would you say it's been more of a make or more of a break?

Is that a question? Is that a real question?

Look at our coverage. No, it's gone brilliantly. Everything's great. Everything's fine.

The story, I think, of 2025 has been just the drip, drip, drip, deterioration further.

It sort of started getting to a point going into the summer where it felt like every

maybe every two weeks, there was a new challenge or mini crisis.

And then we had the summer.

And then from September, it felt like it was maybe up to

like one a week or even two a week. It sort of sped up a little bit snowballed. We've now got

the Labour Party polling at around 18%. So only two above the Green Party. You've got Kirstehm and Rachel

Reeves having the lowest popularity ratings of, I think, any Prime Minister, Chancellor ever.

...