Is it safe to come out from behind the sofa yet? I looked ahead at 2024 a year ago, but it seems longer. Dare I peep out to look again? What resolutions will be made in the next year?
January is Davos. All the famous faces gathered to play at being Bond villains for a week: ideal copy-fodder, and since they are meeting in private, it does not matter what I write – I cannot be proven wrong. It has the best expense account of the year, all to have a skiing holiday, phoning in occasional, pre-written copy. Bless you Klaus Schwab.
Think of poor Keir, opening the year with no good options. Over Christmas he munched a wilted stick of celery, all he can eat, and thought of his career. Over in the corner a shapeless sack of potatoes is slumped, and knows he still cannot sack Mr Lamentable. His wife appears, barely remembering his face, wearing a newly donated diamond ankle bracelet, and wishes Angela’s would stop beeping during cabinet meeting. He resolves to show more spine and be effective, and will be as successful in that as he has in all his other endeavours.
Xi Jinping sits upon his purloined throne, dreaming of being waited upon by robed eunuchs: waking, he sees it is the British Ambassador, which is little different. How far such men have fallen, he thinks, since they marched to Peking and burnt the Summer Palace. He resolves to take some more islands, as a new years’s present to himself. He would resolve to humiliate Keir Starmer, but the man is beyond humiliation.
Rachel the Reaver resolves to learn a new skill. Having seen all those farmers talking about here for some reason she could take up sheep-shearing perhaps; but is convinced you have to skin the sheep.
Angela hears a knock at the door: is it late carol singers, or a discarded man, or the police again? Some late visitor, this and nothing more – she hopes. She dreams and resolves to defend local democracy from populism, by cancelling elections and abolishing councils that refuse to vote Labour.
Boris looks out from his Berkshire mansion, in Colombey-les-deux-Villages, and resolves many things for the year – none of which will he follow through.
Vladka, in the Kremlin resolves, well, we know his resolution, as he orders from his chef a fresh Kiev.
In India, a group of entrepreneurs gather to welcome the New Year, looking over at Britain. They resolve to begin a fund so that, in a couple of years, when Starmer has done all he will being doing, they can step in and buy up whatever remains of Britain for scrap.
I too must make a New Year’s resolution. How though to leave the country? Many of my friends are packing up to go to Dubai, but that is no place for a civilised person. America has become like broken Britain but with no culture, with gun battles, too many politicians, and a village Napoleon in every ‘HOA’. France is France: fine for a summer or a skiing season, but all too French the rest of the year, so that is out. Switzerland would be dandy, even out of season, if I can be sure that the arrest warrant has been withdrawn. Liechtenstein, a libertarian / Hobbesian idyll in the mountains could suit me as a hide-away until Starmer is gone. There are no shops though, and Vienna is a long way away. There is of course Vienna, Austria-Hungary encompassed but with a Habsburg-shaped hole in the middle.
If I cannot leave for better fields, I will resolve to find places to stash the money to keep it from Rachel’s grasping hands until our land is delivered from its tormentors. And maybe longer if Kemi gets in and is as impotent in controlling the Leviathan as her predecessors were.
There is a lot to be thought of. In the meantime, I wish a prosperous 2025 to all, albeit with little expectation that you will achieve it unless you managed to get abroad.
