2026 will be pivotal year. Will a widening world conflict be averted? Will widening inequality be reversed? Will we restore health to our economy and our people, combat housing injustice and can the government start delivering, after halting much of the decline caused by their predecessors.

The risk of another world war escalated in 2025. Russia is boosting defence spending to 10 per cent of GDP while the UK’s inches to 2.5 per cent over the next two years. A ceasefire and sustainable peace in Ukraine must of course be a top objective. But Ukraine has become Europe’s frontline. Peace would grant Putin the option of switching his now substantial military to other ill-prepared fronts, while the US president’s notorious petulance leaves NATO substantially weakened.

With the ‘new’ government approaching halfway point, it risks running out of road if it doesn’t deliver in 2026: to address desperate unmet housing needs; to restore our NHS, left substantially undermined by the Conservatives; to ensure water companies deliver the clean environment and water services we pay them for; to put the UK at the forefront of combatting the nature and climate emergency; and much more. Though political opposition parties are bound to accentuate the negatives, our politics has become ever more unforgiving. Parties of the right and far-right seem now to have become engaged in a deeply unpatriotic quest, not just hoping the governing party fails, but the country with it.

The further abuse of Prime ministerial patronage to stuff the House of Lords with a favoured few (shamefully, all parties, including my own do this) is excused in terms of an “ermine arms race” to avert the upper-house becoming a log-jam on government progress. It’s time this was stopped and the cancer removed. Replacing it with independently appointed talent from all walks of life alongside a citizens’ assembly should form a new basis.

We welcome the government’s Animal Welfare Strategy. My constituency office was raided and occupied by Hunt supporters and my family and I threatened when I stood ground to help get the Hunting Act into law in 2004. Then there were as many opinions as people engaged in the debate about how to curb the ‘rights’ of those who get pleasure from chasing wildlife to their death for sport. The Act was therefore a compromise. Hunt supporters taunted they could "get around" the ban. And indeed, that's what it seems many have been doing. This must stop.

So, I welcome the proposed ban on so-called 'trail' hunting as part of the Strategy. It has been exposed as a "smokescreen". Those who enjoy country and equestrian pursuits will still be able do so; but without the deliberate chasing of wild animals to death. Drag hunts have been going for over 200 years and have shown how it can be done.

Blethen Noweth da!