New year, give your guesses at where events both domestic and international will go in the new year.

Domestically, we have the Labour mid-point, perhaps the point where we start feeling good sentiment from them being in power (?) Or another year of the right-wing press gaslighting us that everything is awful and you should stop caring. Anyway, there are a set of local elections, largely focused on cities, in May, and a King's Speech due.

Internationally, the domination of Ukraine and Gaza may be over as both move their way towards peace, though we know that can take a long time and people still are dying daily in this and many other conflicts around the world. On elections, there are the US midterms, but like with 2025, the scheduled elections don't have all that many that we're expecting to be significant with most of the G7 without nationwide elections this year. Israel, Brazil, Sweden, Hungary, Denmark and Bangladesh perhaps look the most likely to attract international comment.

We have the Senedd elections here in Weeyals later this year. Hoping for a Plaid FM of course but concerned about Reform as ever.

Brett-Butler’s Contrary Opinions for 2026 -

UK Politics:

In Scotland, SNP win the most seats, albeit surprisingly short of a total majority. They enter into a confidence & supply arrangement with the Lib Dems. Reform come a distant yet strong second.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru win the most seats, with Reform a close second and Labour nearly wiped out. Plaid enter a coalition with the Welsh Greens.

In the local elections, Reform win the most seats considerably, with Labour taking major losses. The Conservatives make small but manageable losses after Kemi’s attempts to steady the ship seem to be taking effect. Whilst the Greens were expected to make major gains, these end up being muted after a major story breaks about their leader that the papers had known about, but were holding off on releasing until just before the local elections. The Liberal Democrat’s also make major gains, but nobody notices.

In the UK Parliament, Reform win the majority of by-elections in 2026. This includes a humiliating by-election loss for Andy Burnham, who tries to get back into parliament to jostle for the role of PM in a by-election in a safe Greater Manchester seat. The biggest surprise however this year is Your Party, which gains a shock seat in a London by-election.

Two Tories defect to Reform, and in a massive shock, so does one Labour MP.

Keir Starmer resigns as Prime Minister after the local elections. The Angela Rayner factions and Ed Miliband factions agree to a compromise candidate, leading to Shabana Mahmood becoming not only Labour’s first female leader, but also the first Muslim Prime Minister.

US Politics

The Republicans face a wipeout in the midterm elections, losing both the House and Senate comprehensively. Trump will not be president by the year end (70% chance standing down/30% chance death, natural and otherwise). JD Vance becomes President, and overnight abandons his “Baby Trump” persona he adopted on becoming vice president and adopts an approach more in line with Rerorum Novum.

Other

A “peace deal” is finally agreed between Ukraine and Russia, with Ukraine effectively losing Crimea for good, with Russia also taking ownership of parts of Ukraine as well. By the end of the year, there are reports that emboldened Russian troops are encroaching on the Moldovan border, with the expectation that they will invade early in 2027.

The uprising in Iran will fizzle out.

Spain wins the World Cup, the UK wins Eurovision, oil prices collapse.

The Venezuelan situation took most of my political winds over the weekend but let's give something a go here.

Domestic (UK)

Keir Starmer stays in place as PM, even after the locals, which are less a disappointment for Labour purely because of the context of them being almost entirely favourable areas for them and so it's hard for Reform to trumpet the wins they did last year when they win control of five councils at best, three of which were already Tory-held. General good economic conditions continue but the government is continually dogged by occasional scandals and people constantly feeling like they have less money than they should.

Reform still hold first place in the polls by the end of the year, but only just, as, England-wise at least, pretty much all 5 parties lie somewhere in the range of 17-23%, and election nerds are being edged to the point of breaking by the chaos an FPTP election would cause on these numbers. Your Party quietly disbands after winning less than 10 council seats in the local elections. Scratch that, they can't do anything quietly. But they do disband.

PC and SNP win their respective elections in Wales and Scotland, Reform do get in both places in reasonably significant numbers (fail to become the opposition in at least one though) and spend the remainder of 2025 finding scandals emerging from these national politicians.

International

Trump invades Greenland, why not at this point, by which I mean plonks more military there without asking permission, the EU and the rest of NATO pontificates about whether to do anything but ultimately decides to leave it alone rather than go to war or risk their economies collapsing over a frozen island not even on their continent, Denmark isn't happy but can't do anything about it, Greenland is now listed with dotted lines and ambiguous ownership for at least the next 3 years. Trump spends much of the rest of the year talking about doing the same to the Panama Canal before doing the same thing there in the autumn without consequences. We end the year with him noisily talking about invading Cuba and are genuinely wondering whether a world war will start at some point.

Midterms are not as disastrous for the Republicans as we hope, partly due to disinfo across red states but also partly because the median voter is callous and/or disaffected, but the Democrats do take back the House.

Lula wins an incredible 4th term in Brazil, he and Sheinbaum begin the workings of a Latin American pact, not openly anti-American but aimed at preventing more nonsense like January's abduction, early stages though and doesn't really achieve anything by the end of the year.

Ukraine war ends with Crimea and most of the Donbas ceded, I predicted this last year too but it's continuing to look likely. With peace, Russia is welcomed back into the international fold like they never left and so they're in perfect time for the Los Angeles Olympics (the Russian Olympic team were upset they never saw it in 1984).

Israel manage to avoid starting too much trouble in the first half of the year, at least until they win Eurovision, which... sort of goes ahead but in a rather subdued manner with viewership slightly but noticeably down. Vain hopes Netanyahu's cohort will be defeated in the election come to nothing and another attack from an extremist group (Hamas or otherwise), gives them the green light to start things again.

China doesn't invade Taiwan yet, rather chooses to continue to economically dominate. Recent news that BYD has overtaken Tesla will be punctuated by other Chinese companies like Xiaomi getting more popular, though this'll particularly hit in the automotive sector with others like Geely and Jaecoo making waves.

World Cup is successful overall but the amount of group games is criticised for a number of boring matches, regardless at least one fun underdog team will make it to the quarters by simply dodging the big teams. The organisation of games particularly in the US will also be criticised with tickets not selling out in several group matches and heat being a major factor.

Fidesz is not ousted in Hungary as that country becomes less and less like a real democracy, but the right-wing bloc lose power to Sweden and Magdalena Andersson becomes PM once again after having too short a time of it last time, though her and her party's aims to emulate their Danish Social Democratic neighbours on immigration doesn't make this an entirely positive development. The Danes lose power to a right-wing coalition, btw, because that's where that line of thinking eventually leads you.

Well hopefully Trump dies soon! Although it might already be too late for America ☹️