A rather uneventful year for the Labour Party – a stagnant poll rating (it has fallen around 3 or 4% since this time last year), underwhelming European election results and few major changes in personnel or policy (Emily Thornberry’s resignation being the notable exception). What this has masked, however, is a Labour Party in flux.

2015 will be a crucial year for Labour as it, for the first time after the Blair/Brown years, comes to terms with its own identity. Accordingly, the fortunes of Labour are particularly difficult to predict, aside from that we may see significant soul searching and muted internal conflict.

by Chris Jarvis.

1. Labour will emerge as the single largest party in 2015

A peculiar prediction to begin with, given what has been said previously about the difficulties of predicting Labour’s fate. However, electoral arithmetic would suggest that Labour will probably emerge as the largest party in May next, year, albeit without a majority. As has been frequently noted, Labour need a smaller proportion of the vote to gain a majority – and so a squeeze on their polling over the next five months should still allow them to hold on to being the largest party.  Significant gains from the Liberal Democrats, as well as similar wins from the Tories should inch them 60 or 70 seats up on their 2010 result. In and of itself this would put them just shy of a majority in the House of Commons, but combined with losses to the SNP in Scotland means that Labour will hold only a handful more seats than the Conservative Party.Continue Reading