2025 in review: Starmer's year of drama

A year is a long time in the podcasting world, especially for podcasts keeping a close eye on the highs, lows, trials and tribulations of government. Because it has been quite some year for Keir Starmer and his team – and for British politics more generally. 

We’ve had reshuffles, resignations and resets. The rise of Reform. The breakthrough of the Greens. Promised policy blitzes. A planned rewiring of the state. The start – apparently – of the government’s delivery phase. A government-defining budget. Some government-disrupting leadership challenges – real or imagined. And every now and then someone called Donald Trump crashes into the picture. 

The IfG team and the Financial Times’s public policy editor Chris Smyth look back on an eventful 12 months and pick out the big moments of 2025 – the most significant stories, the big political developments, and the key appointments that could shape the year ahead. Not all of these will have made huge headlines. Perhaps they should have done – let’s see.