Mystic Mag on a new year and a new Britain
NEXT year must be an improvement on a 2020 that saw 80,000 plus deaths in Britain and the economy battered – but by how much?
Incompetent Boris Johnson and his useless Tory mob will still be in Misgovernment, Brexit’s damage becomes clearer, No 10 could botch virus vaccinations while Conservative austerity is returning with a vengeance to slash public services and scythe support for people.
Here, I peer into my crystal ball as Mystic Mag to see what 2021 may hold for us all…
CORONAVIRUS
LOCKDOWNS in January and February will make winter grim as soaring infections, fatalities and full hospitals are a deadly start to the new year.
The £2-a-jab cheaper and easiertoinject Oxford jab will be a welcome boost over the trickier £15-a-shot Pfizer inoculation yet early failures to supply hundreds of GP surgeries and hospitals are setting alarm bells ringing.
Boris Johnson has a terrible track record, his lethal mistakes responsible for the globe’s worst lost lives and livelihoods double-whammy, after falsely predicting life would be back to normal last summer then this Christmas and now next Easter. With Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s “world- beating” track- and- trace system’s a privatised fiasco, I fear that some of us will be waiting for a coronavirus jab this time next year.
BREXIT
THE bad deal turned out to be better than no deal for cynical liar Johnson and it’ ll be rubberstamped by bounced MPs on Wednesday in Parliament.
Yet as the year goes on, initial relief will give way to resentment as the costs and inconvenience of customs red tape, bureaucracy, lost free travel and uncertainty over a service sector worth 80% of our economy all begin to bite.
Conned fishing folk realising the PM threw them overboard too after fanning undeliverable hopes are only the first pro-Brexit group to discover leaving the EU isn’t all it was cracked up to be.
BORIS JOHNSON
SPOUTING hot air at a rate which makes him a one man climate disaster, blustering
Jo hn s on will continue to fib and deceive because he knows no other way. Growing ranks of Tory MPs are openly contemptuous of the Prime Minister but he’s likely to survive next year, with ambitious rival Rishi Sunak forced to wait if the virus wanes from its peak and businesses begin to reopen.
The Cabinet reshuffle expected early next year is an opportunity to axe dead wood and promote abler Tories. But Johnson prefers running a chumocracy, surrounding himself with cronies. The giant ego in Downing Street is terrified of being overshadowed so one lot of non-entities is likely to be replaced by a similarly mediocre bunch.
LABOUR
CAPTAIN Foresight Keir Starmer will find his second year as leader is tougher than a first in which he had virus answers while useless Johnson dithered.
Defining himself as competent against blundering Johnson was skilfully achieved but he needs to inspire more, to start crafting Labour as an alternative Government. The former chief prosecutor has to deal with the Corbyn problem, restoring the whip to his immediate predecessor or risking civil war by permanently excluding a comrade with influential friends.
Corbyn is a lose-lose now for Starmer so avoiding own goals would help in 2021.
ECONOMY
UNEMPLOYMENT is forecast to soar towards 2.6 million and the sharp Resolution Foundation is predicting the economy will be another 6% smaller by Easter, so 2021 is shaping up to be bleak.
Record falls this year won’t be followed by equally high rises next and families will feel the pain, the virus and Brexit kicking an economy that wasn’t exactly sprinting before either. Buckle up for another rough ride.
TORY PAYBACK
MULTI-millionaire banker Rishi Sunak’s a Chancellor itching to cut, cut and cut again with public services in the 2021 firing line.
Invest to grow would be the mantra of any sensible, far-sighted economist and it’s Britain’s tragedy to be lumbered with another Tory slasher in an ideological strait-jacket. Brace for reduced services, squeezed spending, wallet-emptying freezes and higher charges.
DISUNITED KINGDOM
NICOLA, Queen of Scots, winning May’s Scottish elections will trigger a constitutional showdown when
Johnson resists a second referendum as polls show the country would vote for separation. Labour in Wales is under threat from a nationalist Plaid Cymru and unionist Tory pincer while Brexit is pushing the two parts of Ireland together.
Chuck in ever louder English demands from the likes of Andy “King of the North” Burnham for regional rule and a creaking Disunited Kingdom won’t survive without radical reforms.
NIGEL FARAGE
DONALD Trump gone and Brexit done heralds creeping irrelevance for a bore droning on about what he did in a war that he invented in his own head.
Make no mistake, Farage was the most significant recent politician never to win a Westminster seat.
Yet relaunching his UKIP-Brexit Party as Reform UK smacks of desperation by a plastic patriot craving visibility to boost money-making opportunities.
THE MONARCHY
US prosecutors straining to speak to oily Andrew while get-rich-quick Harry and Meghan milk oodles from royal celebrity is exposing the sordid underbelly of a tarnished Ruritanian court.
With the Queen 95 and hubby Philip 100 next year, wayward younger generations are jeopardising the future of a musty institution heading for fundamental upheaval. I predict another year of scandals for the wealthfare family.
UNINSPIRING Joe Biden will be a breath of fresh air after he enters the White House on Wednesday, January 20 for the sole reason he isn’t deranged Trump. The US recognising its friends are democracies not tyrannies, curbing greenhouse gases and obeying world rules are a source of cautious optimism. Trump will continue screaming he was robbed as he tries to stay out of jail and threatens to run again in 2024.