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Thoughts for 2021 (not exactly cheery I'm afraid).
1) Brexit is finally "done" and it's consequences will reverberate through the next decade or more. It is a stupid act of national self-harm which we will regret. I think it will lead to a united Ireland and breakup of UK.
1) Brexit is finally "done" and it's consequences will reverberate through the next decade or more. It is a stupid act of national self-harm which we will regret. I think it will lead to a united Ireland and breakup of UK.
I mostly just hope that this will happen peacefully, and that the economic hit will not be too deep and not hurt too many people before we rejoin the only free trade area that makes ANY sense for us to be in geographically. We definitely will rejoin if they will have us.
Although that might be something like EFTA rather than full EU membership.
As to breakup of UK, I think it is just a question of which nation breaks away first. NI has a constitutional route to it already with a border poll, but it very polarised.
As to breakup of UK, I think it is just a question of which nation breaks away first. NI has a constitutional route to it already with a border poll, but it very polarised.
Scotland has to navigate the inevitable dirty war from Westminster, somehow. But they seem much more likely to unify in the direction of independence sooner rather than later. Bizarrely, Wales has the fastest-growing indie movement. Don't count us out of the race yet.
The Tories have show that they will do anything - ANYTHING- to stay in power. Expect more blame games, purges, gaslighting, shameless lying, gerrymandering and electoral bribes. But at some point I think the tide will turn and they will be made to own the shit they've caused.
On COVID, we are teetering on the edge. If the new variant genuinely had R>1 in lockdown, we're fucked. Because BoJo et al will be too late to take the hard decisions, will shilly-shally around, and have burned up too much public trust getting us here.
We have a few weeks, maximum, to turn this around before first the hospitals get overwhelmed, and then the mortuaries. I remind you again of the shape of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. We are making the same fucking mistakes all over again. But we have NO EXCUSE.
We have vaccines which we know work. We are mass producing them. We know what happened in 1918, and have a pretty good understanding of why - which is something they lacked at the time. They didn't even really know what a virus WAS. We sequenced COVID within weeks of first cases.
What we have conspicuously failed at is political management of the pandemic. The UK could hardly have made a worse job of it if they tried. Welsh, Scottish and NI devolved governments have tried but been hamstrung by Westminster's control of purse-strings.
We are potentially in for a rough few months, with the first true can't-escape them consequences of Brexit coming home to roost at the same time as the nation needs to be a in a ferociously strict lockdown to stop new variant COVID while we roll out mass vaccination.
Countries do get through disasters, wars, famines, pandemics, and so on. But do it badly and a lot more people die than if you did it well. (Ref: New Zealand vs. UK COVID situations).
So we are, sadly, living in interesting times.
