Here we are in the new year, and already you will have read several pieces making their predictions for 2024 (either seriously, or one of those “sideways look through a cracked crystal ball” wacky affairs).
I thought about joining them. Then I realised that in the case of THIS new year, 2024, it simply isn’t possible. Things are changing so rapidly and drastically with every passing day that it’s impossible to say, even in jest, where we’ll be a few months or even a few weeks from now. How, for example, can I crack gags about how Rishi Sunak’s premiership will fare in the coming 12 months when there’s a decent chance he’ll already be out on his arse by the time you read this?
Nor is it even a certainty – as many folks mistakenly believe – that there’ll DEFINITELY be a general election this year. While most people believe – and indeed PRAY – that our convulsing, spasming government will go to the polls at some point in 2024, they’re not actually constitutionally OBLIGED to until January 2025 (assuming of course that they don’t just pass a bill saying they don’t have to).
The one thing one can predict with any confidence is that there are some things that definitely WON’T happen. And so, here are my predictions for things that definitely will not transpire in 2024…
BORIS JOHNSON UNDERGOES A MORAL EPIPHANY
I don’t know where Johnson will be by the end of this year; he might have been banished from public life, he might have given up on politics to become a full-time “personality”, he could be well on his way to re-seizing control of the Tories OR forming his own new political movement (even if this initially consists solely of Boris himself and Lord Cruddas grovelling at his ankles and drooling “Yes Master” at his every utterance).
But one thing that Johnson will not do in 2024, or indeed ever, is develop any sort of ethical perspective on his own actions. He’ll still be reacting to every suggestion that he might at any stage have behaved improperly with that same look of hurt bewilderment he wore throughout his testimony to the Covid inquiry. He’ll still believe that everything he does is OK, since by definition everything Boris Johnson does is OK because it’s Boris Johnson doing it and everyone loves Boris Johnson.
LAURENCE FOX GETS CAST AS JAMES BOND OR BATMAN
… and/or quits blaming everyone other than himself for his career going down the tubes.
RISHI SUNAK RENOUNCES ALL HIS WORLDLY GOODS
Wherever Rishi is by the end of 2024, you can be sure he got there by private jet. If this year does, as is widely expected, see the end of his time as prime minister – perhaps even his time in politics in general – then I’m sure he’ll be hugely consoled by the thought that at last, he can stop pretending to know or care what it’s like to NOT be fabulously wealthy and just get down with his bad diamond-encrusted self.
JACOB REES-MOGG GETS DOWN WITH DA KIDS
…swapping his oversized pinstripe suits for similarly baggy trackies and puffer jackets, renaming himself J-Dog and ending all his sentences with “innit though”.
LIZ TRUSS BECOMES SELF-AWARE
With the rise of AI, more and more programs, applications and algorithms will begin to achieve a sort of rudimentary consciousness, an understanding of their own existence and their place in the scheme of interaction, both machine and human. As such, every one of these programs, applications and algorithms will have achieved a higher level of self-awareness then the fleeting former prime minister and member for South West Norfolk, Liz Truss.
One might think that being the single most disastrously failed PM in British political history might put a bit of a dent in one’s confidence, but Truss is still – and will continue to be – strutting around the world making speeches and writing books about how she was right about everything. If she had an ounce of consideration she’d be offering herself up for study by the psychiatric community, because if we could isolate and reproduce that sort of blithe obliviousness in medicinal form, it would be the biggest breakthrough in mental healthcare since the discovery of tea.
JEREMY HUNT IS PLUNGED INTO SELF-DOUBT AND INSECURITY
Nothing has ever shifted that “I Know Something You Don’t” grin of his and nothing is ever going to.
ELON MUSK CHANGES SOMETHING ABOUT TWITTER THAT ACTUALLY MAKES IT BETTER
Like selling it to someone with an emotional age of over 15.
A POEM FOR 2024
We don’t know where we’re going
We’re not sure where we are
Some say we’re going nowhere
Some say we’ve gone too far
Some say the journey’s over
Some say it’s just begun
Some think we’re bound for sadness
While others hope for fun
The guilty go unpunished
And revel in their crimes
Just like the Chinese curse
We live in interesting times
But maybe this will be the year
We turn the ship around
And sail for saner waters
Before we run aground
