The Complete Dunt Awards 2025

Welcome to the second annual celebration of all that is best and worst in our political culture.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to the second annual Complete Dunt awards ceremony, where we recognise all the best and worst people of the year. So without further ado, let’s hand out some imaginary medals.

Politician of the Year: Ed Miliband

Edward Miliband ©House of Commons

Ed Miliband is under constant fire. No.10 briefs against him, the Treasury tries to neutralise him and the right-wing press viscerally despises him. “Ed is the one minister we don’t want to be a success if we want to win the next election,” a government source told the Sunday Times in January, pretty much defining the coverage the energy secretary would get for the rest of the year.

Why do they hate him so much? Because he is progressive and he is effective. He is a refutation of the pathological self-hatred of the Labour government.

No other secretary of state can match him for accomplishments. He has signed off long-delayed solar farms, launched GB Energy, unveiled plans to cover school and hospital roofs in solar panels, killed the moratorium on onshore wind turbines, pushed ahead with the warm homes plan in the face of bitter opposition and created tens of thousands of jobs at Sizewell C. In the last few weeks alone, we’ve seen an overhaul of the grid connection system, the publication of an expert taskforce report with detailed proposals to reset nuclear, an upgrade of gas and electricity grids, the publication of GB Energy’s five year plan, and a climate action plan.

The purpose of this frenzied activity is to achieve a target which hardly anyone thinks possible: a clean power system by 2030. There are dangers to that plan - if Miliband fails, particularly on new grid projects, we’ll end up paying wind operators not to generate power. That’ll keep bills high, which feeds into the growing right-populist assault on net zero.

But what a sight this is. Miliband is increasingly a symbol of all that is best in British political life. He is trying to achieve something radical and idealistic, an outrageously ambitious goal which would help save the planet, modernise the country, give people jobs and increase UK security. He is pursuing this task with expertise built up over decades. And he is succeeding because he is that rare thing in Westminster: a specialist, with countless years of experience in one policy area, and a razor-sharp focus on one specific aim.

He is an example of what centre-left government looks like, how it can attract liberal support, and the things it can do to improve the world. No wonder they fucking hate him.

National Treasure: Miriam Margolyes

There is no greater sight in all the world than a woman in her eighties with no more fucks left to give. Miriam Margolyes has a fine record of performances on stage, film and TV. She has a lifetime of political activism. She has written three books. But I’m really not interested in any of that. I’m interested in the role she plays when she sits on a sofa and talks.

Here she is telling Alexander Skarsgård that she was unimpressed with his father’s performance in Mamma Mia.

Here she is talking about wanking off three men in a park.

Here she is stating what any right-thinking person would think when greeting Jeremy Hunt.

Here she is being honest about money, or flashing Martin Scorsese, or savaging Boris Johnson, or pissing in the sea.

People often mistake authenticity with rudeness. This is because we’re socially primed to laugh but we are discouraged from being rude, so rudeness serves as a better test of authenticity. But if you watch Margolyes you see that her delight is as real as her straightforwardness. She loves being in a room full of people and having them enjoy her stories. At the start of nearly every interview you will see that childlike joy dance in her eyes in a wholly unprofessional way. The people around her have guarded or professional smiles. She has something else entirely.

Margolyes is a lesson in how to live life. What you see in her is a complete lack of shame: about who she is, about how she looks, about her body, about her taste, her desires and her opinions. She is committed to being herself, come what may. They should put her on in schools as an instruction manual for a life well lived.

Cunt of the Year: Donald Trump

Photo by Pau Casals on Unsplash

Look, I know it’s unoriginal. It breaks the fundamental journalistic law of lists, which is that it is more important to be controversial than it is to be correct. But the basic ontological reality is that there is only one person who could possibly be cunt of the year and that person is the president of the United States of America.

Over the last decade, we have all had to accommodate Trump’s presence in our mental life. For some he is an unqualified source of inspiration. For others, he is a useful idiot who has driven domestic political reality in their direction. For a third group, who in any other era would have been perfectly amiable liberal types, he is a force you must bend yourself to.

But there is another set of people who take a different view. They think he’s a cunt. I count myself proudly as a member of this group. There is no complexity to this judgement. The first time we saw him, within seconds of him talking, we thought: Oh yeah, it’s a cunt. Nothing that has happened since then has changed our opinion in the slightest. This is not because we are set in our ways. It is because it was obvious that he is a cunt and we were correct to conclude it.

This wasn’t so much a political evaluation as a personal one. He contravenes very basic lessons in what it is to be a decent human being. He is mean, vindictive, egotistical, self-obsessed, ignorant, hateful, spiteful, deeply stupid and vain. He’s a cunt. Obviously. Man’s got cunt written all over him. Now he has broadcast his personality across the globe, forcing us all to live in a world of cunts.

Twat of the Year: Morgan McSweeney

There are many people to blame for the flaws of this government, not least of which is last year’s politician of the year Keir Starmer. But no-one is more to blame than the author of the government’s strategy: No.10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

Chief among his faults is the decision to adopt a reactionary position on immigration, supposedly as a form of triangulation. This has had three terrible effects. It has eradicated Labour’s ability to get a hearing on one of the most salient political issues in the country with voters on either end of the spectrum. It has undermined the government’s ability to secure growth and improve public services. And it has failed to hold the moral line against the far-right.

This last failure is what should haunt them. It is the realisation which should look back at them in the mirror and wake them in the middle of the night.

The world turned this year. The moral norm against racism broke down. Suddenly ethnic minorities faced abuse on the street again. The worst scum on the face of the earth felt they could say what they liked, with abandon. Front benchers talked about whether they could see “white faces” in a part of town. Newspaper columnists talked about deporting all Muslims.

In that historical context, Labour failed to hold the line. It could have stood against racism, but instead it made excuses for it. It could have stood up for immigrants, but instead it betrayed them.

This is the McSweeney strategy. It is a reflection of his foolhardy electoral approach and his corroded political values in roughly equal measure. It is an act of foolishness, irresponsibility and moral failure on a historic scale.

Dick of the Year: Liz Truss

Photo by Gabriel Mihalcea on Unsplash

In a year like this, we needed a comedy subplot. The former leader of the Conservative party provided it. In the last couple of weeks alone, she managed to start a podcast and front a private members club. Her every act lightens the psychic toll of the news agenda.

Truss has all the venality and malignancy of the other bastards this year, but none of the influence, success or talent. She is the least competent politician we have ever seen. In terms of presentation, content and record, no-one can quite match her consistent lack of qualities. Her primary social contribution to the life of the nation now comes as a kind of ad-hoc psychological experiment in which we discover what life is like when you have literally no self-awareness whatsoever.

It’s been a dark, dark time. But she really has made it a happier and more satisfying experience than it would otherwise have been. She is like a reminder of a different, better world, in which the lunatics were stuck making podcasts in cupboards rather than running world economies. It’s been so terribly nice to drop in every so often, find out what she’s up to, and enjoy the ruination of an enemy.

Backbench MP of the Year: Kim Leadbeater

Not a difficult decision. Leadbeater is an example of what can be accomplished in politics, with hard work, diligence and a bit of luck. Over the course of the year, she has driven forward the assisted dying bill, fighting her way through the Commons stages.

Some people have criticised the speed of its progress or the quality of the scrutiny. They have plainly never seen Westminster legislation before. This bill has received genuine exploration in a way that the vast majority of bills never do. Leadbeater has listened to people’s concerns, showing empathy and understanding. She has sat through countless hours of committee stage meetings. She has seen something she wants to achieve, got her head down, and worked it.

I remember speaking to Lynne Featherstone once about how she got same sex marriage through. She said she’d been inspired by former ministers who advised her: pick one thing you want to achieve and dedicate yourself to it. I sometimes think this narrowing of your ambitions is a pre-requisite for a successful political life.

This is what Leadbeater has done. She is a testament to what politics can achieve and how you should conduct yourself when you are pursuing it.

Columnist of the Year: Katie Martin

A good columnist tells two stories. The first is intellectual. They tell us why some aspect of the world is the way it is. The second is emotional. They make us feel that we are less alone. They let us know that someone else feels the same way we do, that someone else is equally enthusiastic, or amused, or horrified.

The main emotional connection I required this year, particularly when it came to the markets, was bafflement. I was deeply confused by why they behaved the way they did. Why are the bond markets quite so aggressive against the UK? Why are the stock markets quite so giddy in the US? And why in god’s name would people keep showing confidence in AI companies who act more like a cult than a private enterprise?

I’m not saying that FT columnist Katie Martin has the answer to these sorts of questions - no-one does - but every week she gives an authoritative assessment of where the thinking stands. She rejects doomerism and boosterism in equal measure. She combines curiosity and intelligence with humanity and humour. She is the best possible guide to a world which makes no sense: the Platonic form of what a columnist should be.

Best Political Podcast: Unholy: Two Jews on the News

There were moments where I struggled with this podcast this year, particularly when the murderousness of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza became too much to bear. But I was kept going by the inexhaustible humanity of co-host Jonathan Freedland in particular. His conscience and moral authenticity, his willingness to say the difficult thing and address the hardest questions, helped illuminate an issue which became full of rage and hatred and mutual dehumanisation.

Sticking with the podcast allowed me access to an emotional plane which I otherwise would have become completely disconnected from. In one episode, the main item was about the return of the remains of hostages. It was treated as a moment of national mourning, on the level of 7/7, or the death of the Queen. In the UK, that simply wasn’t permeating. We would look at Israel’s decisions with outrage and incomprehension. And part of the reason for that was because we were completely divorced from the public mood in the country.

In one sense, this plays into a grotesque trend. Israeli lives are personalised. They are made real. But Palestinian lives are anonymised, turned into rubble along with their homes. The journalists who might have told us their stories are barred from entering Gaza, or simply killed.

There is therefore a countervailing pressure to close your ears to Israeli suffering. But we do not increase our sense of humanity by eradicating one set of people from our minds. We do it by expanding those we can contain in ourselves. We do not give in to binaries, especially when it comes to human suffering.

Unholy provided a vital function this year, bringing eye-opening accounts of politics in Israel, granular information about political and military events, and proper valuable analysis about what was happening. But most importantly, it allowed me to understand where people were coming from when their actions seemed to me morally inexplicable. My universe would have been a smaller place without it.

Best Political Film: Superman

Photo by Esteban López on Unsplash

No contest here. It’s not Eddington, or One Battle After Another, or A House of Dynamite, let alone the latest release on Mubi. It’s Superman, without a doubt.

Superhero comics are primarily the product of Jewish nerds in 1930s New York. They therefore represent the values that those men held: Protect the weak. Stand up to the strong. Celebrate diversity. Reject cruelty. Do the right thing.

We now live in a world that is completely opposed to those values, where we celebrate vindictiveness and strength and homogeneity. We live in a world ruled by people who would be the villains in a DC comic.

So when Superman came out, it was no surprise that Trump’s little cottage industry of regime-loyalist journalists took against it. Simply by representing the values of superhero comics it looked like a piece of radical propaganda: a manifesto for kindness, social responsibility and immigration.

It was a breath of fresh air, a gasp of technicolour in a world gone black-and-white. A reminder of the time that we used to punch Nazis, not cosy up to them.

Best Political TV Show: Pluribus

This is such a strange, magical TV show. The plot of Pluribus seems irrelevant to where we are right now: What if everyone but you was happy and unified? After all, happiness and unity are not things we have an overabundance of at the moment. It then goes on to discard all the tropes we’ve come to associate with political sci-fi: dystopia, riots, grey techno-dilapidation, the whole Children-of-Men aesthetic of moral warning.

And yet, for some reason every episode brims with political meaning.

It has that delicious quality where the comparisons and symbolism seem to blossom out from the screen, demanding multiple interpretations: group-think, AI, humanism in an age of technology, consent, kindness, and the existence of the individual in a populist society. It is utterly fresh and bursting with thoughts about the world. A delight, shimmering with unexpected relevance.

Best Political Moment: The Georgian independence movement

They’ve come out every day, every week, every month. No-one gives a damn. No-one really notices. But they come out anyway and they take a stand. Since autumn last year, Georgian protestors have battled for their future.

They first emerged to protest against the 2024 election, in which the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party used Putin’s usual tactics to steal people’s votes, overrule their wishes and turn Georgia into a Russian satellite state once again. They kept coming: again and again, in the freezing cold, against tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray. They went on strike. They demanded the release of their fellow demonstrators. They tried to storm the palace.

They have been fighting for over a year now. Nothing will stop them. No police force or weather condition can prevent them. Even with barely any Western interest, even after a year in which most movements would have lost their momentum, they just keep on going.

As in Ukraine, they do not simply fight for self-determination. They fight for Europe. For a dream of Europe: A place where countries cooperate rather than merely compete, where they are free to determine their own affairs and choose to do so in concert, where safety and freedom are guaranteed by virtue of mutual dependence.

This is the dream that Putin despises, that Trump detests, that Starmer will not voice, and that even European leaders are too self-effacing to say out loud. It is one of the most beautiful ideas of the post-war period. It is an experiment in geopolitics that is simply without precedent, which is so much more daring and radical than the archaic nationalist solutions of the populists.

Every day, every week, every month, the people of Georgia go out and fight for that dream. We owe it to them to try and live up to their expectations.

Happy New Year. Here’s to a better 2026 and the people who will make it so.