In 2025, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace were also linked by something else: an unrelenting torrent of turbulence that buffeted their respective occupants.<\/p>\n
They faced different challenges. For Starmer, the year brought a stream of dire political setbacks as his government\u2019s authority wavered and Nigel Farage<\/a>\u2019s Reform UK<\/a> streaked ahead in the popularity stakes. Meanwhile, the alleged antics of Andrew<\/a>, Charles\u2019s younger brother, ensured the royals endured a proper annus horribilis as tough as any had by their mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, who famously uttered the phrase in 1992.<\/p>\n That year, there were revelations about the troubled private lives of Diana and Charles, then the Prince and Princess of Wales; the separation of Andrew and the divorce of Princess Anne, as well as a fire that raged through Windsor Castle.<\/p>\n In 2025, the dual dramas of the UK\u2019s government and its monarchy mostly played out on parallel tracks. But occasionally they overlapped, such as when Andrew\u2019s travails over his association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> came to a crescendo near the year\u2019s end, posing awkward constitutional questions for king and prime minister.<\/p>\n For both men, 2025 will likely go down as a year to forget. For the rest of us, the sheer spectacle of it all will live long in the memory.<\/p>\n Here is how their respective crises played out during the year.<\/p>\n January and February<\/b><\/p>\n The year got off to an inauspicious start for Starmer, and the then Prince Andrew was embroiled in the story. Just before Christmas 2024, scandal erupted when it emerged that Andrew had grown close to an alleged Chinese spy in Britain, Yang Tengbo.<\/p>\n The issue complicated the Labour<\/a> government\u2019s plan to improve economic relations with China, as further details of the scandal tumbled out in the new year, just as the UK\u2019s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves<\/a>, went on an official trip to Beijing.<\/p>\n January was also a difficult month for the prime minister due to the provocations of Elon Musk<\/a>, who was the then-incoming US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s closest confidante. It was awkward for Starmer, who was keen to cultivate close ties with Trump.<\/p>\n Billionaire Musk used his X social media platform to call for the UK prime minister to be jailed over the grooming gangs scandal, where men, often of Pakistani Muslim descent, raped and abused vulnerable white British girls on an industrial scale. Musk accused Starmer, a former prosecutor, of being \u201ccomplicit\u201d in official neglect of the issue. <\/p>\n Friction had been brewing between Starmer and Musk since the previous summer over the UK prime minister\u2019s tough response to right-wing riots that engulfed Britain after the Southport stabbings. This time, the prime minister chose not to rise to Musk\u2019s bait.<\/p>\n Musk also aimed brickbats at Starmer\u2019s main political foe, Farage, who had always presented himself as Trump\u2019s favourite politician in Britain, although as 2025 wore on it seemed the US president grew more distant from him.<\/p>\n In January Musk was upset with Farage for refusing to embrace the far-right activist and political agitator Tommy Robinson, whom the US businessman admired. \u201cThe Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn\u2019t have what it takes,\u201d Musk posted on X.<\/p>\n Like the UK prime minister, Farage tried his best not to fall into the trap of getting into an unwinnable verbal war with the US president\u2019s most powerful confidante.<\/p>\n By February, Reform topped a UK national opinion poll for the first time, ahead of Labour with the Tory party a distant third. Farage\u2019s party would not relinquish its lead for the rest of the year, pulling farther ahead with each new poll. Starmer had been prime minister for only seven months, yet people were already talking about Farage as his successor.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the coming storm hadn\u2019t yet kicked off in earnest for the royals. In January Andrew became a grandfather for the fourth time when his daughter Princess Beatrice gave birth to Athena, 11th in line to the throne.<\/p>\n It was also announced that the cancer suffered by Catherine, the Princess of Wales, was in remission. But if the king, who in 2024 was also diagnosed with cancer, believed this was a sign of a better year to come, he would soon be disabused of that notion.<\/p>\n March and April<\/b><\/p>\n While the Labour government led by Starmer slid further into domestic difficulty, the prime minister was kept occupied by tricky international matters.<\/p>\n At the start of March he hosted Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> at Downing Street, a day after Ukraine\u2019s president was humiliated by Trump in a fiery Oval Office meeting, and two days after Starmer\u2019s own visit to Washington, when he invited Trump to Britain for an unprecedented second full state visit.<\/p>\n Zelenskiy was also hosted on his trip to Britain by Charles, in what seemed like a coded message to Trump to lay off the wartime leader \u2013 the US president is known to covet a close relationship with the king.<\/p>\n The fear in Downing Street that relations with the US could come off the rails was deepened by comments from Trump\u2019s vice-president, JD Vance<\/a>, who said that Ukraine could not rely on protection \u201cfrom some random country that hasn\u2019t fought a war in 30 or 40 years\u201d, widely seen as a put-down of Britain.<\/p>\n Again, Starmer didn\u2019t directly rise to the provocation, but he pushed back subtly in the House of Commons by pointing out that many British soldiers had died alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Charles, who had resumed public duties during his cancer treatment, was briefly hospitalised again in March. He was also forced to cancel a trip to Birmingham as well as three meetings with ambassadors in London.<\/p>\n Buckingham Palace said it was just \u201ctemporary side effects\u201d of his cancer treatment, but the British public was reminded of the physical vulnerability of their king.<\/p>\n Charles and Queen Camilla celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in early April. But just over two weeks later a portent of the coming storm arrived in news of the suicide of Virginia Giuffre<\/a>, a victim of Epstein\u2019s who also alleged she had been forced by him to have sex three times with his friend Prince Andrew, more than two decades before.<\/p>\n May and June<\/b><\/p>\n The domestic political pressure on Starmer from the rise Reform and Farage began to mount.<\/p>\n On May 1st, Reform\u2019s candidate Sarah Pochin pipped a Labour candidate to victory in a crucial byelection in the Cheshire constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, just south of Liverpool. It was once considered one of the safest Labour seats in Britain.<\/p>\n The Irish Times caught up with Farage on the campaign trail. As he leaned on a fence with a pint in his hand, he identified what he saw as one of the biggest problems facing Labour: Starmer himself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is only nine or 10 months on [from Labour\u2019s general election victory the previous July] and a really big issue in places such as this is that Starmer himself is so incredibly unpopular,\u201d said Farage. \u201cI\u2019m trying to work it out. It\u2019s not because he\u2019s a nasty person \u2013 because he isn\u2019t. It might be a lack of authenticity.\u201d<\/p>\n Reform also performed well in a slew of local elections in England on the same day, with a projected national vote share above 30 per cent, just a few percentage points below the threshold that delivered Labour a landslide Westminster election win months earlier.<\/p>\n Starmer responded on May 12th with a speech promising a crackdown on immigration<\/a>, as he warned Britain faced becoming an \u201cisland of strangers\u201d, which some said echoed Enoch Powell\u2019s infamous anti-migrant \u201cstrangers in our own land\u201d speech. Starmer later admitted he was wrong to have said what he did.<\/p>\n The next month, Starmer effectively lost control of his own party when the government was forced to abandon plans to cut the welfare bill, after a huge rebellion among Labour backbenchers. He struggled for the rest of the year to regain his authority as leader.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766225170_702_XOGRE45PWV7P3IDPIKCFBKHHOI.jpg\")
The year got off to an inauspicious start for British prime minister Keir Starmer. Photograph: Andy Rain\/EPA <\/p>\n
![\"Chancellor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PMXEZU4IEUTKGNR2VZF62VQOIA.jpg\")
Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves (right) crying as prime minister Keir Starmer speaks during prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons in July. Photograph: House of Commons\/UK Parliament\/PA Wire <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ROAN5JSW2E7ZI2Z4S3WXHM3IKY.jpg\")
The front pages of UK national newspapers showing Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, after King Charles initiated a ‘formal process to remove the style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew’. Photograph: Jonathan Brady\/PA Wire<\/p>\n