Keir Starmer makes large prediction for Mirror readers in New Year message
Prime Minister Keir Starmer tells Mirror readers that ‘renewing our country was never going to be an overnight job’ but vows ‘we are getting Britain back on track’
I want to wish every Mirror reader a very happy New Year. However you see it in, I hope you have a good one!
2025 was a year of great pride. The Lionesses stunning Euros victory. The Red Roses winning the women’s Rugby World Cup. Scotland’s extraordinary qualification for the World Cup. But for many people it was another tough year. I know how hard Mirror readers’ work. And I know that it isn’t much to ask to have enough for the odd meal out, a holiday, a new phone.
So my message this year is simple: 2026 will be the year you start to see the change we promised. You will see it in your bills, in your communities, in your public services. More police on your streets. Asylum hotels closing. New health centres opening in your neighbourhood. Investment in community facilities – parks, piers, youth clubs, the things that give your town pride. You will enjoy new rights at work and, if you rent, in your home too. And you will see child poverty falling dramatically.
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Late last year I was handed a note by a Scottish girl, aged just nine years old. She had written to me to explain all the ways that poverty can impact children. The hunger from missing breakfast. The cold of unheated rooms. The embarrassment of worn-through school uniform. The tiredness and exhaustion that comes with all of it.
To be honest, it was moving to see such perception from a child. And shocking to think that the vast majority of children growing up in poverty in Britain today come from working families. People who are working hard, doing the right thing, but their wages just don’t make ends meet.
That’s why this year we will lift over half a million children out of poverty. By scrapping the two-child limit on child benefit. Expanding free school meals to half a million hungry children. And by waging an all-out war on the cost of living.
But it’s also why it is so important we’ve put our country’s finances back on a stable footing. That hard-won stability is our strength. It means we can now support you with the cost of living and put a bit more money in your pocket.
It’s how we’ve frozen rail fares, prescription charges and fuel duty. Slashed £150 pounds from your energy bills. Cut the cost of childcare significantly for working families. And provided another big boost to the national minimum wage. A deserved pay rise for the shop-workers, cleaners and carers that keep this country going.
Renewing our country was never going to be an overnight job. But we are getting Britain back on track. And with each change for the better, we also show something more important. That decline can be reversed. Opportunity and pride can be restored. And that when you think of the future, it is not silly to think that things can get easier and better for your family.
There is a word for that we’ve forgotten in politics recently – hope. 2026 is the year we can rediscover it. A year when the real Britain shines through more strongly. And we all start to look forward with confidence.
