The euro won't collapse, Barack Obama won't lose the White House - and Labour's lumbered with Ed Miliband.
What does the new political year hold? Let Mystic Janet reveal all... Photo: GETTY
By Janet Daley
9:00PM GMT 31 Dec 2011
It has become this column’s tradition to commemorate the start of a new year by making negative predictions. According to my own rules, I may only contra-predict events which seem, at the moment, to be reasonably likely to occur. So here it is – my list of Things That Will Not Happen in 2012 (even though you thought they would):
1) The euro will not collapse. That is to say, it will not cease to exist as a currency, despite the philosophy and the economic assumptions on which it rests being utterly discredited. As a consequence of the latter, the euro as an idea will have to be reinvented as a purely pragmatic way of avoiding a catastrophic banking collapse rather than as an idealistic solution to the historic mutual loathing of neighbouring European nations.
This downgrading of the single currency project from idyllic dream of eternal harmony to half-baked, impromptu rescue operation will create enormous bitterness and dissatisfaction. Accusations and recriminations will fly across borders, making last year’s preliminary skirmish between Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron look like a pillow fight. More important, what remains of the euro in the conceptual sense will become even less plausible: the suspension of disbelief required to sustain it will exhaust the moral resources of the European political class. So the currency will survive but credible democratic politics as we know it will largely be at an end.
2) A corollary to number 1): fully-fledged democracy will not return to Greece or Italy – whatever promises are now being made about elections in the coming months. If elections are held in the near future, they will involve the participation of caretaker candidates, whose “technocratic” function will be remarkably similar to the puppet regimes which have been put in place by the EU (which is to say, France and Germany). Indeed, they may be the very same people seeking the imprimatur of a popular mandate. This will not particularly worry the Italians, who are contemptuous of their own politicians, believing them to be either criminals or clowns, and whose social solidarity allows them largely to ignore national politics which they see as inherently ludicrous.
But the Greeks will rebel – and the disorder that results will make it impossible for the euro, even in its reconstructed form, to prevail in that country. So Greece will be ejected, perhaps from the EU as well as the euro, not for economic reasons but for political ones: because it will not embrace the deception of the new euro myth that it is only the survival of the single currency which can save us from hell on earth. Greece will be excommunicated and then quarantined so as to avoid the spread of its dangerous dissident views.
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3) Barack Obama will not lose the White House. His poll numbers may look pretty disastrous now, but there are small signs of recovery in the US economy, which is what this presidential election will be all about. It is generally regarded as fatal to his chances for a candidate to have “peaked” too soon, but Obama will have “troughed” too soon for the Republicans’ chances. His lowest point may have come and gone by the middle of summer.
If unemployment is falling, gradually but consistently, and growth is recovering, slowly but consistently, and if his healthcare programme has not been defeated in the Supreme Court, and he beats back any further challenge on tax cuts from the Republican Congress – well then, he will come through. It will be no landslide, and there will be none of the revivalist euphoria of the first win, but he will get his second term. It was almost certainly the suspicion that this would be the case which persuaded the most interesting Republicans (like Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey) not to run this year.
If I am right and the American economy recovers sufficiently to save Mr Obama from a graceful retreat into academic life, this will be pronounced (by some interested parties) a victory for the Keynesian economic stimulus policies which he espoused, as opposed to the European “austerity” programme which advocates cutting the deficit as a first priority. This will be entirely wrong as an interpretation of events. The American economy will recover from its current despond – as the American economy always does – because of the work ethic and enterprising spirit of its population. Its revival will have nothing to do with the spending projects of federal government.
Indeed, it is the relatively minimal influence (by European standards) of government intervention in the US which permits its citizens to reinvigorate their economic life by their own resources and efforts. The Obama second term will give the Republicans time to regroup behind a candidate less boring than Mitt Romney, and to formulate its arguments against Mr Obama’s march toward the social democratic neverland in which Europe is now trapped. Political discourse in America will be no less rancorous during the second term of the Obama presidency but it will be more coherent: not for the first time, the US will be engaging in the real argument about the size and power of the state that should be dominating discussion in all the Western economies.
4) Ed Miliband will not be replaced as Labour leader. However dismal the public’s perception of him, and however chaotic and self-contradictory his criticism of Coalition policies, Mr Miliband will survive. When he occasionally scores a point or lands a respectable blow, he will be greeted with deafening cheers from that cohort of activists whose loyalty to any Labour leader is of North Korean proportions. At the moments when his performance seems most ragged and confused, he will find a hand reaching down to him from media heaven to haul him back from the depths of despair. Perhaps out of sheer pity (or am I missing the joke?), a small clutch of defiant commentators will declare him to be really more clever and percipient than you might have thought, etc, etc.
But the real reason that poor Ed Mili will keep his job (God help him) is that, at this precise moment in time, nobody else wants it. The Coalition may have its own problems but it’s a bummer having to lead the fight against it: a government whose views are ambiguous and inconsistent cannot be opposed with a clear message. And an Opposition party without a clear message cannot make its mark.
So on to one last anti-prediction: this coming year will not be as bad for most people in Britain as it is being cracked up to be. And with that, may I wish you a very Happy New Year.
My predictions for 2012? Much of the same, sadly - Telegraph
