I really enjoy retrospectives like this, and I'd love it if you were able to do some with slightly longer time horizons. My general observation about politics is that most of the impact a government has tends to happen after it is no longer in office, just because policy changes usually take a while to have an effect. You mentioned in this post that you didn't have many predictions to review on policy - I wonder if perhaps you need to instead look at the policy choices of 3-4 years ago as fodder for review? There might be more useful data for those to analyse...
As someone who obviously lives a very full life, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on smarter work and not be told to work ‘harder’. I’m thinking in particular about South Cambridgeshire Council being told they need to work a 5 day week. I deal with S. Cambs regularly, they are efficient and their results and awards demonstrate that as a fact. They also hold on to their staff.
It's great how you do this. I do think you are one of the best people on either side of the aisle at predicting things correctly.
I'd love to see you write about what would happen if the radical left did take power somewhere. Trump's tariffs have shown that 'But everyone says that's a terrible thing to do' doesn't mean it won't happen - so how would things play out if a government in a country the size of France/Germany/the UK tried to introduce a full-fat version of the policies of Die Linke or the Greens?
A more interesting scenario might be what policies would they try to prioritise if they wound up supporting a left bloc coalition or confidence and supply deal in a hung parliament? Would they really focus on the green policies or would it all be wealth taxes and other stuff?
I’d be really interested in your take on the demographic transition and what it means for economics, politics and employment. I think it’s the story of the next decade, good and bad.
I'd be interested in how you see the role of the LDs, and also a deep dive on pensions - I'm really worried about a looming genX pension crisis as people get to retirement age with little pension, then there are qs about what the implications are for public policy now and how we mitigate for future generations
I would agree with this for many reasons (geographical proximity, close ties, Ukraine, because I believe political/cultural closeness to US is hugely overestimated).
Whatever the rights and wrongs of having more European and less US coverage, the last sentence is wrong. Cultural closeness to the USA is immense (kinship links, language, literature, popular music, film and TV, system of common law, etc.). Political closeness to the US is also huge, largely for the above-mentioned cultural reasons, but also because of similarities in the parliamentary aspects of government and the electoral systems. This is aside from formal military and intelligence links.
Much of this also applies to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and in practice Ireland.
A lovely festive self-critique which reinforces the value of your newsletters. For the future predictions, I would suggest looking at a less-explored aspect of what we lump together in the AI label - not how it can be better than human experts, but how it can be “good enough” to replace many of the things that service agencies charge their customers for (as “thinking” doesn’t look good on an invoice): producing reports, powerpoints, writing SEO content, media plans, etc. A whole raft of stuff that is boring or time-consuming for internal depts to do can now be instantly generated and tweaked by them, and LinkedIn ads spewed out in infinite variety to see what sticks. For a country now reliant on service industries this may prove much more damaging than anticipated…
You may have done this but interested in effect on politics of demographics, particularly in the west, where the older generations appear to have eaten the younger generations’ breakfast, lunch and dinner, blunting aspiration and breeding resentment, with little sign of politicians giving the subject houseroom.
You could kill several of these birds with one stone if you looked at the respective policy position of Reform and the Conservatives, and the Green Party and Your Party on welfare, and compared and contrasted this with the current government's policy, which is being re-designed for 2026.
It seems to me that this will be one of the key tests by the time of the next general election. And having failed at his first attempt, if Starmer is determined to lead Labour into that election he will need to try again - and possibly again. Arguably, we've been getting this wrong since the 1970s.
In any case, your own analysis - and next year's audit for 2026 - is certain to separate the wheat from the chaff. Thank you for all your posts in 2025* and have a good Xmas break yourself.
*I found the post about your unexpected hospital visit both moving and reflective, though the dreadful situation in NHS emergency care seems to be deteriorating even more each month.
Thanks Sam - insightful and honest as always. One thing I’d love to see next year is what, if any, consequences of your writing you’ve observed. Appreciate you may be hesitant to acknowledge that - as it could move you from an independent observer to an actor - but this blog will be read by people inside government and I’m sure you must have a sense of its influence.
It's honestly quite hard to tell. I know this substack is widely read in Westminster and when I raise topics I sometimes notice them getting more coverage or being talked about more, but I'm never sure on the causal relationship unless it's made explicit! It was nice to see Paul Johnson cite my post from last week on immigration in the Times today.
I love the format. Honest and inspiring. The underlying knowledge and analysis is very clearly top tier. I also appreciate that, while data play a role, your analysis usually correctly takes into account “intangibles” as well.
Related to this, I have a genuine question about correcting for enthusiasm. How can one estimate voter enthusiasm? Is it related to constituencies, demographics or other factors?
I would agree with your own assessment that you are significantly overlooking and under focusing on AI.
An article giving serious treatment of the economic, military and existential risks would be very sensible. I see a lot of left of centre analysis dismissing it as "stochastic parrots" etc, which seems dangerously misguided.
Thank you Sam, as honest as ever! I find your articles, particularly on UK politics, always give me some further insights that hadn’t occurred to me and as a former pol, this is a fairly rare thing on MSM for me, so do keep it up 👍
I suspect a hell of a lot of MSM political journo’s read your posts and I’m 100% sure the Westminster politicians do!
Thank you, and I do hope you have a better year health-wise 🤞🙏
I don’t have recommendations or requests but would like to thank you both for your work in the past year and to send best wishes for the holidays and to say „Guten Rutsch“.
This may be just me but I would be interested to see some more on European politics from you or potentially even further afield. I realise it gets more difficult as you move further away from the UK but we get so little informed coverage of this, that I think it would be a valuable service.
My main takeaway from this review: keep passing off things I read here in the pub, as if they are based on my own expertise and research, as it definitely does make me look smart
I really enjoy retrospectives like this, and I'd love it if you were able to do some with slightly longer time horizons. My general observation about politics is that most of the impact a government has tends to happen after it is no longer in office, just because policy changes usually take a while to have an effect. You mentioned in this post that you didn't have many predictions to review on policy - I wonder if perhaps you need to instead look at the policy choices of 3-4 years ago as fodder for review? There might be more useful data for those to analyse...
As someone who obviously lives a very full life, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on smarter work and not be told to work ‘harder’. I’m thinking in particular about South Cambridgeshire Council being told they need to work a 5 day week. I deal with S. Cambs regularly, they are efficient and their results and awards demonstrate that as a fact. They also hold on to their staff.
It's great how you do this. I do think you are one of the best people on either side of the aisle at predicting things correctly.
I'd love to see you write about what would happen if the radical left did take power somewhere. Trump's tariffs have shown that 'But everyone says that's a terrible thing to do' doesn't mean it won't happen - so how would things play out if a government in a country the size of France/Germany/the UK tried to introduce a full-fat version of the policies of Die Linke or the Greens?
A more interesting scenario might be what policies would they try to prioritise if they wound up supporting a left bloc coalition or confidence and supply deal in a hung parliament? Would they really focus on the green policies or would it all be wealth taxes and other stuff?
I’d be really interested in your take on the demographic transition and what it means for economics, politics and employment. I think it’s the story of the next decade, good and bad.
I'd be interested in how you see the role of the LDs, and also a deep dive on pensions - I'm really worried about a looming genX pension crisis as people get to retirement age with little pension, then there are qs about what the implications are for public policy now and how we mitigate for future generations
My feedback is we need way less US politics and way more European politics on this substack.
I would agree with this for many reasons (geographical proximity, close ties, Ukraine, because I believe political/cultural closeness to US is hugely overestimated).
Whatever the rights and wrongs of having more European and less US coverage, the last sentence is wrong. Cultural closeness to the USA is immense (kinship links, language, literature, popular music, film and TV, system of common law, etc.). Political closeness to the US is also huge, largely for the above-mentioned cultural reasons, but also because of similarities in the parliamentary aspects of government and the electoral systems. This is aside from formal military and intelligence links.
Much of this also applies to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and in practice Ireland.
A lovely festive self-critique which reinforces the value of your newsletters. For the future predictions, I would suggest looking at a less-explored aspect of what we lump together in the AI label - not how it can be better than human experts, but how it can be “good enough” to replace many of the things that service agencies charge their customers for (as “thinking” doesn’t look good on an invoice): producing reports, powerpoints, writing SEO content, media plans, etc. A whole raft of stuff that is boring or time-consuming for internal depts to do can now be instantly generated and tweaked by them, and LinkedIn ads spewed out in infinite variety to see what sticks. For a country now reliant on service industries this may prove much more damaging than anticipated…
You may have done this but interested in effect on politics of demographics, particularly in the west, where the older generations appear to have eaten the younger generations’ breakfast, lunch and dinner, blunting aspiration and breeding resentment, with little sign of politicians giving the subject houseroom.
You could kill several of these birds with one stone if you looked at the respective policy position of Reform and the Conservatives, and the Green Party and Your Party on welfare, and compared and contrasted this with the current government's policy, which is being re-designed for 2026.
It seems to me that this will be one of the key tests by the time of the next general election. And having failed at his first attempt, if Starmer is determined to lead Labour into that election he will need to try again - and possibly again. Arguably, we've been getting this wrong since the 1970s.
In any case, your own analysis - and next year's audit for 2026 - is certain to separate the wheat from the chaff. Thank you for all your posts in 2025* and have a good Xmas break yourself.
*I found the post about your unexpected hospital visit both moving and reflective, though the dreadful situation in NHS emergency care seems to be deteriorating even more each month.
Thanks Sam - insightful and honest as always. One thing I’d love to see next year is what, if any, consequences of your writing you’ve observed. Appreciate you may be hesitant to acknowledge that - as it could move you from an independent observer to an actor - but this blog will be read by people inside government and I’m sure you must have a sense of its influence.
It's honestly quite hard to tell. I know this substack is widely read in Westminster and when I raise topics I sometimes notice them getting more coverage or being talked about more, but I'm never sure on the causal relationship unless it's made explicit! It was nice to see Paul Johnson cite my post from last week on immigration in the Times today.
I love the format. Honest and inspiring. The underlying knowledge and analysis is very clearly top tier. I also appreciate that, while data play a role, your analysis usually correctly takes into account “intangibles” as well.
Related to this, I have a genuine question about correcting for enthusiasm. How can one estimate voter enthusiasm? Is it related to constituencies, demographics or other factors?
I always enjoy reading these posts.
I would agree with your own assessment that you are significantly overlooking and under focusing on AI.
An article giving serious treatment of the economic, military and existential risks would be very sensible. I see a lot of left of centre analysis dismissing it as "stochastic parrots" etc, which seems dangerously misguided.
Thank you Sam, as honest as ever! I find your articles, particularly on UK politics, always give me some further insights that hadn’t occurred to me and as a former pol, this is a fairly rare thing on MSM for me, so do keep it up 👍
I suspect a hell of a lot of MSM political journo’s read your posts and I’m 100% sure the Westminster politicians do!
Thank you, and I do hope you have a better year health-wise 🤞🙏
I don’t have recommendations or requests but would like to thank you both for your work in the past year and to send best wishes for the holidays and to say „Guten Rutsch“.
This may be just me but I would be interested to see some more on European politics from you or potentially even further afield. I realise it gets more difficult as you move further away from the UK but we get so little informed coverage of this, that I think it would be a valuable service.
My main takeaway from this review: keep passing off things I read here in the pub, as if they are based on my own expertise and research, as it definitely does make me look smart