2020: My perfect vision of the future
I’m not a betting man. The last time I put money on a horse, John Major was prime minister, a development I had failed to anticipate. But if I was, how would I have made out in 2019?
I was right about the slim chances of a second referendum. And I’d have cleaned up on Jeremy Corbyn coming a distant second in a two-horse race with Boris Johnson. On Brexit itself, I would have raked in the cash after correctly forecasting that any deal with Brussels would require a Northern Ireland-only backstop, to which Johnson agreed shortly after assuring the DUP that no such violation of sovereignty would ever be accepted by a Tory prime minister.
I’d have been wrong, though, about Emmanuel Macron. I thought Macron’s sheer cleverness, added to the necessary nature of his vision, would see him home against the French. I should have known that he was in fact too clever by half and that the combined assault of gilets-jaunes and Communards – reflecting my maxim that change is only possible in France provided that everything remains the same – would leave him isolated, like a sullen version of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Pope.
By contrast, what I am most smug about is the continuing survival of the European Union, including its single currency. In spite of economic upheaval, mass immigration, disputes between France and Germany, near-mutiny by the former East Bloc and the mess that is Italy (to say nothing of the departure of the UK), the EU remains the Voice of Europe in the world, more popular than ever with the majority of its citizenry, including a majority of Italians. At its heart, the Commission proves how much more efficient and effective democracy is when it is taken out of the hands of the people.
The EU is here to stay, which is more than can be said, with any degree of certainty, of the United Kingdom. It’s impossible to know what the result will be of Indyref2 when it comes along, which come along it must (though probably not this year). But the risk of a Scottish breakaway is real, with Irish unity close behind as Northern Ireland settles into its new role as an EU protectorate. Everything depends on how Brexit works out over the next two to three years. If Global Britain takes off, the UK will most likely still extend from Land’s End to John O’Groats. If it doesn’t, look to the Queen to mark her 100th birthday with a Christmas Broadcast on the EBC that admits to her horribilist year yet.
On the other side of the Atlantic, events in America unfolded much as expected last year. Donald Trump is a ghastly man, easily the worst President of the United States of the last hundred years. If he was intelligent, like Nixon, or sincere, like Reagan, he could command respect or affection, however grudging. But he’s no more than a schoolyard bully. The man disgraces democracy, demeaning the nation of Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Eisenhower and LBJ.
But there he is, just as I thought he would be, like the Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. Where is Darth Vader when you need him?
As the crisis has deepened, Democrats have chosen to take a leaf out of the Corbyn playbook and forgotten why they got into politics in the first place – to achieve power and implement their programme. In an election year, with the White House, by any rational analysis, an open goal, all they can think about is impeachment. No one in the country has the slightest idea who will represent the party in the presidential race. The current multitude of candidates, most of them unknown outside of their own homes, snipe at each other constantly, coming up with little on which they can agree apart from their detestation of Trump.
Maybe they will get their act together in time to present a coherent response to the incumbent’s ongoing blitzkrieg of tweets and Billy Graham-style revivalist rallies, the latter steeped in profanity, with belief in Trump standing in for faith in God. But don’t count on it. Half of America may despise the six-time bankrupted businessman for everything he represents; the other half, having factored impeachment into the process, adores him for the same reason. So expect the election to go down to the wire, with the increasingly quixotic Electoral College once more coming into play.
In Asia, where economic growth under 10 per cent per annum is regarded as humiliating, China remains on course to become the world’s leading economic power, with a military capacity to match. It won’t happen this year. The US economy is strong and resilient – which it needs to be with Trump at the wheel – and the Pentagon is in charge of an unmatched spread of weapons. But I would be amazed if the status quo persisted much beyond the decade now beginning.
India will remain China’s chaotic cousin, electrifying its villages at the same time as it sends spacecraft to the Moon; Africa, with its vast and soaring population, will continue to frustrate those who wish it well; South America will carry on building and mismanaging its multiple economies; the Middle East will churn; Japan will be cautious. There will be corruption everywhere.
Russia, mercifully, presents rather less of a threat than you might think. Its influence in the world is peaking. Vladimir Putin – previously like Karla out of Le Carré – is starting to resemble a Mafia boss on the slide. The economy over which he presides is entirely dependent on oil and gas. The country’s manufacturing output, outside of the defence sector, is miniscule. Its banking and financial services are built on intimidation and fraud. It would be a stretch to depict Russia as a paper tiger. Ukraine and Syria are proof enough of that. But as the year unfolds, Putin’s grip on power looks likely to become increasingly shaky. Russia is starting to unravel, and the man who has held it together for the last 20 years is showing signs of his mortality. We just need to be careful as he lashes out.
Which only leaves the future of the world as we have known it. One of my more persistent Facebook friends – a former headmaster who spent years of his life coaching football in the developing world – believes that Greta Thunberg is the unwitting stooge of “powerful forces” determined for reasons as yet undisclosed to return western civilisation to the Stone Age.
Like millions of others, my friend is aware that not all is well in the natural world. But he refuses to admit that we need to do much beyond improved recycling and maybe a bit of reforestation. Not even the inferno now gathering force in Australia will convince him otherwise. Equally disturbing is the attitude of what in America are known as “ordinary folks”. Another friend, not long retired, posted a picture the other day of a pile of plastic water bottles discarded by a peleton of youthful cyclists in the middle of the countryside. Are you surprised? Realistically, unless the ideologues of the Climate Revolution manage to storm the barricades, the most we can expect from the bulk of humanity is an increased use of paper straws.
I expect a similar attitude – “Let’s not make a drama out of a crisis”– to be echoed by many of the world’s leaders this year, with the European Commission an honorable exception. The twenty-sixth World Climate Change Conference, set for Glasgow this November, will almost certainly achieve little, just like its predecessors. After all, if Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison sees no reason to give up on coal when thousands of his fellow citizens are crowding onto the beaches to avoid being burned alive, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Still, mustn’t grumble, eh? Our beloved British prime minister, with his 80-seat majority based on 43 per cent of the popular vote, has said we must all swing together and put the divisions of the past behind us. There is to be no defiance in defeat, but magnanimity in victory.
So the process of re-education has begun. It was less than a month ago that Remainers were routinely condemned as “Remoaners,” out to impose their views on the rest of us. Now it is Leave that claims the moral high ground, so that those who dared to proclaim the virtues of the European Union are being exhorted to confess their error and rededicate themselves to the cause of New Britain. I am left to wonder if the triumphalists of Brexit will ever, as Trump once jested of his supporters, grow tired of winning.
Paris may be more clever,
Berlin may make more row,
But we’ll row for ever,
Steady from stroke to bow,
And nothing in life shall sever
The chain that is round us now,
And nothing in life shall sever
The chain that is round us now.
Happy New Year!