'You don’t need to be Mystic Meg to predict 2024 will be Labour’s year'

30 December 2023 , 18:08

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Labour leader Keir Starmer (Image: Getty Images)

Did you have a good Christmas? A quiet one, I hope. I woke up from a Baileys/turkey/Guinness-induced coma to the news that you’re soon going to be able to buy wine by the pint – a piece of news which put me straight back to bed.

Do we really need a pint of wine? Possibly we do, because this is already shaping up to be an extremely busy year and it doesn’t start until tomorrow.

The election is nailed on – either in the spring or the autumn. I’ve been gambling on autumn but it could easily be spring. And judging by the frenzied activity from both parties the past few days, the apparatus expects it sooner rather than later, already leaking out policy.

Let’s look at the Conservative offering first – scrapping inheritance tax. It’s not even a massive move in terms of the electorate, given the amount of people it would affect. As a direction of travel, though, it makes some sense.

The Tories are looking after the super-rich and will be able to lay a trap for Labour about people being “allowed to keep hold of their money”, and all that. It’s not true, though. As Labour say, by the spring the country will be facing its highest tax burden for 70 years and the party will be able to attack on the economy. Rare position. Labour’s offering – like a Trans-Pennine train – has been hugely delayed but is very welcome – childcare.

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I can’t remember when it was first aired but the plan (and we don’t have the full plan yet) was described to me as being as radical as the founding of the NHS. I thought it might come in last spring, when the Tories unveiled their own childcare offering that turned out to be completely useless and unreliable – like a Trans-Pennine train.

Labour didn’t pull the trigger then, or at conference. But they have now – and it’s good. Nurseries in primary schools, more childcare places, bringing costs down, integrating education… brilliant. And more to come.

Anyways. These are the first shots of what’s going to be quite the year, with lots in store. I’ve given up predictions (too expensive) and listening to what people tell me. I am with William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.” Except, maybe, the 2024 horoscopes guide in Cosmopolitan magazine. Mr Sunak, a Taurus, can look forward to a “lucrative project… that will bring in significant earnings”.

Sounds to me like he’s heading for the lecture circuit. And Mr Starmer, a Virgo, will be “adapting to a new job that will be a big challenge but the cosmos says it’ll be worth it”. There you go. It’s written in the stars.

Keir Mudie