My big prediction for 2025

Buckle in: we stand on the precipice of a major political shift

Photo: Hermann Junghans / Wikimedia Commons

The great Tony Benn used to speak of what he described as the ‘40-year cycle theory’ – the idea that every four decades, give or take a few years, a momentous political change would sweep Britain, usually the result of a public clamour for reform. Benn would cite as evidence for the theory the Great Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, the foundation of the Labour party in 1906, the radical post-war government of Clement Attlee, and then Thatcher and the monetarist revolution in the 1980s.

If the theory stands, we are due another significant change around now. Indeed, as those who have been paying close attention to British politics in recent years will have noticed, the seeds of it have likely already been sown.

For we are facing the advance of national populism on a potentially major scale. This ideology, a reaction to the devastating consequences for many communities of the new global market and to the philosophy of globalism generally, seeks to reassert the nation state and democracy and to challenge an economic agenda that has caused long-term financial tribulation for millions of families and blighted the life chances of an entire generation. It also strives to halt the erosion of traditional – and particularly Christian – values by the forces of liberal radicalism.