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Keir Starmer is the second prime minister to take a close interest in the proceedings of a mysterious and secret conspiracy, annually Peter Mandelson Dim Sum Memorial Dinner.
This is a group that has nothing to do with Lord Mandelson himself: it is a group of my friends who dined in Chinatown on the day he resigned from Tony Blair’s cabinet in 1998. Coincidentally, we dined again on the day of Mandelson’s second resignation two years later.
Both resignations happened around Christmas, so we did it an annual eventand used the gathering as an opportunity to make predictions about the year in politics forward. For many years now, I have written a year-end column about our deliberations, although I make no grand claims about the quality of our forecasts. Berkshire Hathaway we are not.
However, it turned out that the two prime ministers were among the subset of the population that noticed our forecasts.
When I spoke to Keir Starmer at his election count in July, before he was declared duly elected as Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras, he said he had read my “dim sum predictions” and asked: “Didn’t you say that if was a hung parliament?”
I had to admit that this was the opinion of most dim sum diners this time last year, and that those predicting a Labor majority were in the (albeit quite vocal) minority. I felt that Starmer was entitled, at that moment – on the brink of a huge landslide victory, to take some satisfaction in confounding the doubters.
After all, the other prime minister who reminded me of the dim sum forecast was David Cameron, on the eve of the 2015 election. At the end of 2014 we also predicted a hung parliament – we thought the 2010 coalition government would continue – and I think he was already confident he would win enough seats from the Liberal Democrats to get a majority. “We have to win a lot of places from them,” he told me. And he brought an unexpected victory in the elections.
Fortunately, this year’s dim sum dinner, held at an undisclosed location last week, wasn’t under too much pressure to predict the outcome of the next general elections. Until then, there will be enough time to make many different predictions.
At the moment, however, we thought the election would be in the summer of 2028, although there was also one vote for the autumn and that Labor would win by a majority of around 50. The consensus was that, although the government had made a bad start, the Conservatives were so have lost the confidence of voters, especially on immigration, that it will take longer than Parliament to recover – and that Nigel Farage will continue to divide the vote against Labour. without reform actually breaking through to replace the Tories as the main opposition.
Turning to the more immediate choices of prawn toast and pak choi, the general sentiment was that in the 2025 local elections would give Starmer breathing room, as these are seats last contested at the height of Boris Johnson’s vaccine-boosted popularity in 2021. Labor MPs in marginal seats could delay their inevitable panic for another year. We thought that in 2026 the Scottish Parliament would return to its original design, which was intended to produce hung parliaments where Labor would govern in partnership with the Lib Dems.
As the Peking duck arrived, we tried to predict the fate of certain politicians in the next three and a half years. Again, some of our predictions were unanimous. We meant it Rachel Reeves would survive as chancellorbut that David Lammy and Ed Miliband will not last in parliament. And we agreed that Boris Johnson would not return to the Commons – my view prevailed that Tory members had determined who was responsible for net immigration of almost a million in 2022.
We predicted that Starmer would lead Labor into the electionbut there was one late waver, who argued that while the Labor leader was hard to oust (and Starmer’s rule changes in 2021 made it harder), the “men in blue suits” could get the better of him. In the end, we all agreed that he would survive.
After that, the consensus broke down. Most thought so Kemi Badenoch would lead the Tories into the electionagainst the position of the minority who thought that the service in the previous government would withdraw them. Minority pointed out that Labor had already run its social media ads in the inbox hailing the easing of visa rules.
We didn’t have much time to devote to international politics. We thought Emmanuel Macron would serve his mandate until 2027: most thought it would be Marine Le Pen’s last chance and she would lose. We didn’t think Donald Trump would try to change the US Constitution to get re-elected, and we thought JD Vance would be the Republican nominee in 2028.
But right now the napkin I’ve been writing notes on is stained with green tea stains, so you’ll have to wait until next year’s dim sum dinner for a more complete prediction.
One projection that I think is pretty certain is that in 2028 or 2029 I’ll be back at Camden Town Hall for Starmer’s election count and he’ll deadpan ask: “Didn’t you say it was going to be a 50 majority? ”