2024

As of today, the website Electoral Calculus suggests the outcome of the next UK general election to be Labour on 459 seats, Tories on 120 and the rest hardly anywhere to be seen (no consolation for the Greens who stay on one - if they're lucky). This prediction is based on a round-up of all the latest opinion polls and hasn't really changed all that much for over a year. It's not necessarily good news for Starmer - if he did win a massive majority it wouldn't be long before he discovered that a new opposition would be energised on his own backbenches as the official opposition sank into a crisis of confidence and irrelevance. Hopefully new Labour MPs, many of whom may have small majorities in 'blue wall' seats will be impatient to see results quickly. From what I've heard, Labour doesn't seem to have anything in mind which would deliver that. Quick wins doesn't seem to be the message emanating from the Starmer/Reeves camp. More a message of 'just bear with us.' Inspirational stuff.

One Labour big wig, talking on Sky News has suggested that it's no parliamentary secret that the election will probably be in May, allowing the Tories to benefit from  a Budget rebound, with tax cuts a plenty. It is my prediction that Sunak will continue until October. Why throw away power six months early?

What else will happen in 2024? Surely, it will be the year of our first AI disaster. I am not sufficiently techy to say what sort of disaster, but I bet there's a 50/50 chance there'll be some bad actors behind it.

Climate change will follow its inexorable course to - and past - irreversible tipping points. There is a lot of new technology which could ameliorate how badly and how fast things deteriorate, but following all the talk and pledges made at COP meetings, CO2 emissions have continued to rise. The immediate future, i.e. before significant sea level rise occurs will see impacts in agriculture and refugees. Both of these factors will lead to more protectionism and another rather large wound in the teetering globalisation model. R.I.P.

Israel seems intent on continuing it's genocidal war on Gaza (and the West Bank for that matter) for many months into the new year, with a very present danger of an escalating conflict. This is excellent news - for arms manufacturers - along with with no end in sight in Ukraine either. Somebody needs to develop a human enmity off switch. But it now seems that the right to self-defence means that if somebody comes at you with a knife you can respond with an UZI machine gun. I wonder how this doctrine would go down in an English court? Come on Keir, tell us!

So the only thing we can be relatively hopeful of in 2024 is seeing the back of the Tories, with a hope, (not too slender I hope) that Labour will improve things. Somehow achieving that of course without challenging the hegemony of the City. On the election front, what happens in the States may be more significant but at the moment it is too close to call. A heart attack could settle the outcome.