Living Standards
An unhappy New Year ahead for most of us, I’m afraid, in a deepening cost of living crisis.
Brace for Groundhog Day with disposable incomes plummeting again after last year’s record fall.
Inflation may have peaked but price rises and biting Tory tax hikes will still outstrip wage rises.
Britain is the only G7 economy that remains smaller since the pandemic. To top off this miserable Tory record, the Bank of England is forecasting a long recession.
Strikes
Industrial unrest will grow as cynical Tory ministers provoke walkouts in the hope of political dividends.
With nurses, ambulance crews, rail workers, posties and border staff already striking, the action could spread to firefighters, schools and more of the NHS.
Stubborn Conservatives refusing to negotiate or offer decent awards are up against determined new TUC chief Paul Nowak.
Peace is far away.
The NHS
Our most precious public service will suffer grievously.
The record 7.2 million waiting list in England is due to a decade of Tory austerity but Cons plot to make scapegoats of nurses and the rest of the NHS. Health Secretary Stephen Barclay resembling a bumbling funeral director is an added reason to be fearful.
Boat crossings
Until official safe and legal routes are opened for refugees entitled to claim asylum in Britain, the small boats will sail.
Doing a deal with Albania would cut some from the current 45,000 a year.
Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman are using the Channel as a moat to sink desperate people’s dreams.
The nasty £140million Rwanda scandal is likely to remain a costly PR stunt, with nobody deported or deterred from coming to the UK.
Sunak’s Conservatives
Prime Minister without popular support or legitimacy, Rishi Sunak will discover this year whether a death-wish Conservative Party is prepared to be led.
His hopes of escaping a General Election guillotine rest in persuading floating voters that all the current pain was somehow not the Conservatives’ fault.
The wealthiest PM in history will struggle to pull off this giant Con con – especially as many of his own MPs think he’s a dud.
Starmer’s Labour
Keir Starmer’s goal for 2023 must be to paint – in vivid colours – what Labour would do in power.
A leader forever warning against complacency must beware of seductively large poll leads.
Offering real change at the same time as reassurances
of stability is a tricky test for a Prime Minister-in-waiting but hopefully we will glimpse more attractive policies.
Brexit
The £120billion own goal of Brexit damaged Britain’s economic foundation.
Alas, all we can hope for in 2023 is that the catastrophe isn’t made worse.
Either Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt resist Tory Euronutters straining to break the Northern Ireland deal, or a trade war will wreck yet more businesses.
Ukraine
Both Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin will face mounting pressure to negotiate an end to a bloody, costly war that is wrecking Russia as well as Ukraine.
The first step could be an armistice to halt the killing but Zelensky understandably demands all occupied territory be returned.
Any negotiations will be tricky as defeat could signal curtains for Putin – as he surely knows.
Tory sleaze
Sunak appointing an Old Etonian banker and Tory donor, establishment fogey Sir Laurie Magnus, as his ethics adviser isn’t a good omen.
Restoring public faith in standards is unlikely when Deputy PM and In-Justice Secretary Dominic Raab is under investigation over multiple bullying charges and security-breacher Suella Braverman was reappointed Home Secretary.
Sporting Index speculates there will be only two Cabinet resignations after last year’s 32.
We’ll see.
Boris Johnson
Forget all the spin about a No10 return.
MPs are poised to decide whether Johnson – fined for breaking Covid rules – knowingly misled Parliament, and it looks an open-and-shut case.
Though of course Conservatives on the investigating committee will face behind-the-scenes pressure to let him off the hook.
United Kingdom?
Scottish separation will crop up again next year and Sinn Fein is favourite to win more support at Northern Irish elections.
Plus Wales will prepare for life after Mark Drakeford, who stands down as First Minister in the back end of next year.
And in England the Tories will keep denying folk the free prescriptions, hospital parking etc that’s enjoyed in other parts of this Disunited Kingdom.
Green and pleasant land
Digging a dirty coal mine in Cumbria while allowing NIMBYs to block cheap, clean wind turbines exposes Tory greenwashing.
Short-sighted Cons don’t even care about Britain’s long-term future, never mind the planet’s.
Covid
Imposing tests on visitors from China is a jolting reminder that Covid never went away – but this year the virus has a new purpose for the Conservatives.
The pandemic is a general excuse for everything they did wrong.
The monarchy
Royalty’s declining relevance will be a feature of 2023.
Prince Andrew is fading into the background but Prince Harry’s self-pitying memoir, Spare, may turn more folk against him and wife Meghan later this month.
And in May we peasants could end up resenting having to tug our forelocks at the coronation of King Charles, a man who inherited an estimated £430m from his mum – free from inheritance tax.
