OK, here we go for 2025. In keeping with tradition, answers on a postcard BTL, if you please.
* * * * *
1. Name of first sitting MP defecting to Reform
2. Date of Starmer's first Cabinet reshuffle, as defined below. One bonus point for each correctly-named departure or clear-cut demotion. Two bonus points for any complete change precisely identified (named outgoer and named replacement)
3. Anything you care to predict about the German Fed elections
4. Composition of German government coalition by year-end (if none finalised by then, say 'none')
5. Dollar / rouble exchange rate on Christmas Eve
6. Oh, all right then: FTSE100 on Christmas Eve
(For masochists) Bonus wildcard essay question : at headline level, what will be the state of play in Ukraine at year-end?
Go for it!
ND
________
"Cabinet reshuffle" = two or more changes to the Cabinet roster, unforced by resignation or death. Splitting of an existing Cabinet post into two or more new positions doesn't count per se - only if accompanied by reshuffle as defined above.
21 comments:
... and I had better kick off
1. Jenrick: I can't see how he'll stomach playing second fiddle to Badenoch
2. July / Miliband: bit of a provocation, but he'll get fairly pissed-off with a steady dripfeed of back-tracking, & there will be a Mili/Reeves stand-off
3. CDU biggest party, AfD comes third
4. An emergency 'rainbow' containing some blu-ish colour - after many months of ineffectual nonsense and serious international repercussions of there being a power vacuum in the EU's largest & wealthiest state
5. 150
6. 7,200. Must come off the 8,200 plateau at some point and I'm guessing 'down'
Essay ... maybe ... later !
1. Kemi Badenoch... I jest. I don't see anyone jumping ship this year, so no one.
2. October - Miliband/Siddiq/Reeves
3. Union/AfD/SPD. FDP to get under 2%
4. Cordon Sanitaire gets cracked - Union/SPD with targeted support from AfD and Greens, allows for some po-faced claims that they're not working with the AfD, just occasionally walking in the same direction.
5. 100
6. 8000
Ukraine, later for me too.
Ukraine is an awkward one, as so much depends on how Trump responds to any peace off made to Putin.
Trump views things through a purely business lens, Putin doesn't.
So I'll say that Trump comes up with a Big Deal that makes sense to him, Zelensky signs off on it begrudgingly, Putin doesn't.
Trump, having paper thin skin, takes this badly, and looks at the numbers at providing Ukraine more equipment. Now, it's cheaper to send Ukraine mothballed weaponry/equipment than it is to dispose of it, and ramping up weaponry production makes jobs in the rust belt... When someone says the US is spending x millions on Ukraine, what they mean is that the US is spending most of that on US jobs and exporting the products abroad gratis.
So, based on that, I reckon by year end some of Russia's gains will have reversed, and there'll still be an embedded Ukrainian presence in Russia, and Trump will start suggesting giving them nukes in response to Russia's usual bellicosity about using them.
Think of the geopolitical version of "I offered you a way out asshole, you slapped my hand away, so I'm going to crush your nuts until you cry like a little bitch"
I expect this theory to disproven by February of course
1 & 2; far too tempting to jump straight in right now.
As is 3 - but;
4. None.
5. Rouble rate - sod it, 122.
6. FTSE 100 : 7,610.
Ukraine; God almighty.
2. At least one prediction for now; I think Starmer will carry out two this year; window for the first would be about early May to mid-June. Obviously, the second would be later, but Rayner's position as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and wotsit looks dodgy to me, mainly down to the fact they're intending to merge a number of councils and authorities, with the councils having the option to delay those local elections falling due.
This could kick off big time. She won't be left with only the DPM role, but Starmer might have to invent something to keep her in Cabinet.
1. One of the Tory MPs with Reform hard on their heels whose constituency is prime Reform territory - Essex basically. Mark Francois as a stab in the dark. Hard Brexiteer too.
2. First cabinet re-shuffle to be before end of March 2025, caused by Tulip Siddiq getting forced out due to her habit of acquiring free houses from aunts even more fearsome (and considerably more generous) than Bertie Wooster's. Reeves will follow later in the year when she breaches her spending rules and is forced to contemplate either cut spending or raise taxes (again). Some one else will have to be brought in to fiddle the rules (ideally someone who hasn't been on TV over the last 5 years berating the Tories for messing up the economy and boasting they know how to get the economy growing).
3. AfD to get nearly 25% of the vote. At least one AfD candidate will be arrested during the campaign for something they said. Someone will try to bring a court case to outlaw the AfD but will fail (for now). Elon will get heavily involved in the German election, the EU and all mainstream German politicians will have a fit of the vapours. Outside chance the EU tries to close down Twitter, sorry X, in the EU.
4. Coalition of National Unity between CDU and SPD, with BSW support (Left wing people who dislike immigration are OK, right wing ones are the next you know who). Allows the Greens to be sidelined, so half sensible policies on energy to be adopted, and allows a very slight tacking to the right on immigration etc while still calling the AfD names and trying to close them down.
5. 87 roubles to the dollar (currently 105). Rouble will continue to fall until Trump ends the Ukraine war one way or another in 2025, ending the war (regardless of how much territory they gain/lose) will be good for the Russian economy, so the rouble will recover.
6. Can't see any reason for anything other than stagnation in the UK, so FTSE100 ends 2025 roughly where it is now, 8250ish.
How about Corbyn for Reform? Farage makes warm noises towards him.
"She won't be left with only the DPM role, but Starmer might have to invent something to keep her in Cabinet."
Secretary of State for Gang Rapes.
Jess Phillips, surely?
OT - Trumps new policy re Panama, Canada and Greenland - "The Donroe Doctrine".
Ok, here goes;
1. Mike Tapp.
2. I expect two reshuffles, first as above, about 9~10 months after the election, which feels business as usual, the second early October. If Rayner goes from Housing, I reckon it'll be Trickett with Onn in attendance. I can't see Reeves surviving to give a second Autumn Statement, so replaced by, umm, Reynolds? What with Trump, Trudeau, German elections, and probably elections in France, Lammy would seem to be a walking fuck-up, and could go at any time. Otherwise, Phillips, Jarvis, West, Falconer likely to be shifted about. Eagle (Angela) out on her arse.
3. AfD second, possibly first on the direct votes, gets screwed by the party lists. Panicked and chaotic effort to form a coalition to keep them out, which promptly collapses, leading to;
4. None (as above)
5. 122 RUB/USD (as above).
6. FTSE 100 at 7,610. I really don't like the nVidia chart, at all.
Robert Kagan, no Russia booster, predictions for 2025 - admittedly he probably wants to lock Trump into not wanting to look weak, so he may be overdoing Ukrainian weakness.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/01/trump-putin-ukraine-russia-war/681228/
"if there is not soon a large new infusion of aid from the United States, Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control."
Way OT, but it struck me the other day that there was pretty much exactly one hundred years between the Fleet Review of 1897, when the sun never set on the British empire, and which inspired Kipling to write "Recessional", and the election of Tony Blair in 1997. There's a deal of ruin in a nation, but not an infinite amount. Someone from 1897 arriving in Blair's Britain might have thought that we'd lost both world wars.
I’m not nearly clever enough to offer predictions on all of these, but one I will offer is Miliband bring given the old heave-ho.
There’s political pressure. But there’s also (best Donald Trump voice) hu-uu-uge industry lobbying, now going more-or-less public rather than just in private. Please, for example, take Centrica. Stifle a belly laugh, it’s putting out the begging bowl for subsidies (no change there), this time for gas storage https://www.centrica.com/media-centre/news/2025/perfect-storm-reduces-uk-winter-gas-storage-to-concerningly-low-levels/
But while we’re not talking Enron-levels of mischief in the energy supply industry, there’s plenty of shenanigans which can be worked to embarrass the government at crucial moments. One of these is bound, just bound, to require a sacrificial lamb. Cue mishaps-magnet Miliband.
Repeat after me: empires (imperial ambitions) are always and everywhere drain on the resources of the imperial nation.
In the short term, you can (in effect) loot the target territory. But the drag on prosperity you cause the land you’ve occupied (as you’re extracting from it without returning what you’ve taken) reduces prosperity of the subjects there and eventually, you reach a tipping point where the cost of security (military resources, primarily, needed to defend your conquest) isn’t exceeded by what you can extract from your sphere of influence.
I suspect this is at the root of the Chagos archipelago being given to Mauritius. Well, we’re paying them to take it away, to be more accurate. How would we defend Chagos? How much does it contribute? It’s a net negative. Not that we’d admit it, of course.
In 1897, we were still ransacking the territories we’d (very assiduously and at very low costs, for reasons which are too complex to go into here) gotten our hands on. But inevitably, it was going to run out of runways sooner or later. Ireland, just 25 years later, showed the limitations.
There are two Milibands so please use his formal title: Weird Ed.
Oh no! It’s like Wednesday Addams. Every forgets they had a brother.
Clive, yet according to the Guardian view of history, Victorian UK greatness wasn't due to Watt and Boulton, to Hargreaves and Crompton, to Telford and MacAdam, to Armstrong and Vickers, but to various sugar-cane growers in the Caribbean, rubber planters in Malaya, and copra producers in Fiji.
Why else would the National Trust tell us so at the entrance to every stately home, and the plaques in every museum?
With the increasing opportunities for discussion have come increasing opportunities for dishonesty in discussion. The most common seem to be 1) slanted presentation (cherry-picking of selected facts or data, selecting only those which support your argument and pretending people can’t figure out the ones you’re not ‘fessing up to) and 2) evasion (refusing to answer requests on angles not covered in your argument).
The Grauniad is the poster-child of this, but it is far from alone. This is why language is losing a lot of meaning and everything seems to be degenerating into long form social media posts.
Ukraine: headline situation - ceasefire, negotiations ongoing.
Usual violations along the front, each side blaming the other.
Ukrainian aims; limit Russian progress east of the Dnipro. Halt Russian missile attacks on civilian infrastructure (district heating systems, leccy generation) ahead of the winter.
Russian aims: get any sort of victory that Putin can sell internally (to those actually matter) such that he can step down, as Father of the Extended Motherland, secure in the knowledge that he'll die peacefully in bed, without it achieving terminal velocity.
So, get as close to the Dnipro as fast as possible during spring/summer.
The UK/Latvia coalition thingy is about to supply 30,000 drones. There seems to be an idea knocking about that Russian supply depots are empty of AFVs.
2025 is shit or bust. Putin would prefer significant progress by May. Ukrainian national day is end August.
Assume negotiations begin in earnest by, umm, mid-July, then by year end, Zelensky might have announced elections for early 2026.
"The UK/Latvia coalition thingy is about to supply 30,000 drones."
Every component part of which, sadly, will be made in the Far East.
1. No idea, so my guess is none of them
2. September
3. AfD narrowly largest party
4. Everyone but the AfD form a coalition. But it doesn't last the year
5 (7 bonus). 1$ to 95 roubles, an uneasy peace deal for Russia-Ukraine with everyone trying to spin it as a victory
6. 8300 ... pound devalued increasing the value of non UK sales, the FTSE 100 companies tend to be not actually focused on the UK. The FTSE 250 on the other hand will be down around 17000
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