From Mary Earps to Michelle Mone: the heroes and villains of 2023

One of the few things that future generations of Britons may look back on that was hopeful and encouraging in 2023 was the emergence of women’s football as a sport, and one as full of skill, spirit and joyous entertainment as the men’s game has (usually) been for so long.

Anglocentric maybe, but the Lionesses’ World Cup campaign, brilliantly led by Sarina Wiegman, inspired the nation possibly even more than the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla did.

As the whole British nation – well, at least the English bits – recalls with an intense poignancy, Mary Earps, England’s brilliant goalie, saved a penalty in the final and became a hero back home, and even more so when Nike failed to make her shirt available on their website (it’s now available to purchase, and sells out each time in minutes). Most recently, and inevitably, she has won BBC Sports Personality of the Year – a feelgood moment to relieve a gloomy end to the year.

The Lionesses’ ultimate loss to Spain was almost a footnote in history. Unfortunately for the Spanish, their victory was tarnished by Luis Rubiales, the now ex-president of the Spanish Football Federation, who came under attack after kissing Spain forward Jenni Hermoso after the Women’s World Cup final. One to forget.

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On the whole, 2023 is a year that will be remembered for some very notable falls from grace, and all of them pretty depressing. Indeed, this trend has been discouraging for broadly progressive folk.

Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern, once twin totems of a more rational and compassionate style of politics, bowed out. Ardern confessed she’d been burnt out by leading New Zealand (no need to be rude...); Sturgeon, meanwhile, in response, declared that she had plenty of fuel left in her tank, only to step down soon after – and found herself arrested instead. Something about her husband, a luxury motorhome and the SNP’s finances, or so they say.

In her heyday, during the Covid pandemic, Sturgeon was the very antithesis of bumbling Boris Johnson, just as Ardern had been a sort of anti-Trump on the world stage. Jacinda may return in an international role; Sturgeon not so much. If it’s any compensation, in terms of the political gender balance, Rishi Sunak finally got round to firing Suella Braverman, albeit for being too ambitious rather than for being plain callous.

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A more depressing development was the arrival of the Argentine strongman president and Bernard Manning (ask your parents) lookalike Javier Milei, a man so eccentric he makes Nigel Farage look mainstream. Maybe the pair could meet in the Australian jungle for I’m a Celeb and do some trials in which the winner gets to keep the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas. Would it help the old show’s sagging ratings...?

In the global scheme of things, none of these personalities could ever do anything that would affect so many people as... Elon Musk. He had a momentous year – even by the eventful standards of the world’s richest man – and a fairly predictable one. This was his first full year in charge of what was, and frankly still is, known as Twitter, and to many he’s still messing it up. It’s a long and complicated tale, made all the more bewildering by Musk’s enigmatic/offensive postings on X – but basically, he’s let the far right back in and is threatening to sue any advertisers who don’t like their gear turning up next to unhinged stuff about the new world order, chemtrails, and Holocaust denial. More routinely, Elon launched some rockets that blew up, and a car people laughed at.

More honourable mentions should go to Hannah Waddingham (of Ted Lasso), Matthew Macfadyen (for “winning” Succession), Hanif Kureishi (for his inspiring dispatches from his hospital bed), and Paul Murray (for writing the only readable book on the Booker shortlist). Most of us can take or leave Robbie Williams’s narcissistic Netflix documentary.

Quite unexpectedly – more than half a century after they broke up, and with only two surviving members – The Beatles scored an impressive hit, appropriately titled “Now and Then”, thanks to Paul McCartney’s ambition, some modern technology, and a fanbase that is as devoted as ever. It was often said that the merit of The Beatles’ music would be decided by the test of time – and thus far, joyously, that test has been passed.

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The world of sport gave us some admirable performances, aside from those of the Lionesses. Siya Kolisi, who captained South Africa in back-to-back Men’s Rugby World Cup wins, made the speech of the year, an all too seldom example of someone in public life seeking to build unity: “People who are not from South Africa don’t understand what it means for our country. It is not just about the game. Our country goes through such a lot. We are just grateful that we can be here. I want to tell the people of South Africa ‘Thank you so much’... This team just shows what you can do. As soon as we work together, all is possible, no matter in what sphere – in the field, in offices, it shows what we can do. I am grateful for this team; I am so proud of it.”

This brings us to another, though less charismatic hero. It’s not often that a central bank is afforded heroic status, but, just as they are so often castigated for things over which they have little control, so we ought to offer them credit for the things they get right. Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, along with his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee, managed to chop inflation in half this year (though Sunak and Jeremy Hunt would like to think it was their doing – and can take some credit). Price rises are the most insidious tax rise of all, and there is no better foundation for long-term growth than getting inflation under control. Boring, but true, even as another year slides us closer to AI, the great hope for solving every problem that emerged in 2023.

Here’s another unfashionable candidate for praise: Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who successfully saved the summit from collapse and squeezed a commitment from world leaders, for the first time, to “transition” away from fossil fuels. It’s always fair to be a little bit sceptical about these jamborees, but they’re all we’ve got, and it’s remarkable to see a Gulf petrostate driving such an initiative.

Sometimes, as with the sultan, spin is unnecessary as your achievements speak for themselves. For others, it ends up being a last resort, for the opposite reason. Thus 2023 was pockmarked by a couple of stunning PR disasters. Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman helped finish 2023 on a sleazy note, deciding that they’d clear up the whole PPE scandal thing by telling Laura Kuenssberg that they’d lied to the media (ie the public) and that aside from that one “mistake” they’d done nothing wrong.

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It went down as well as you’d expect. Plainly, they had forgotten what’d happened to Prince Andrew a few years earlier, and, more surprisingly, what befell Hannah Ingram-Moore when she tried in October to justify using the name of her national treasure dad, Captain Sir Tom Moore, for her own purposes. Ingram-Moore was eviscerated by Piers Morgan; in a neat sort of symmetry, Morgan himself now has questions to answer about the phone-hacking scandal.

Morgan is only the biggest potential victim of Prince Harry’s court victory against the Mirror Group titles. He’s got his “issues”, as they say, but Harry won this particular battle decisively. Less happily, Harry’s friend and biographer, Omid Scobie, inadvertently outed the King and the Princess of Wales as the members of the royal family who’d allegedly discussed Prince Archie’s skin tone.

Last, but with potentially the most momentous impact, Baroness (Heather) Hallett is chairing the official Covid inquiry. She is doing so admirably, and is trying her best to get her sometimes foul-mouthed and evasive witnesses – Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock among them – to tell the truth and help us better prepare for and respond to the next pandemic. Let us pray that she produces some lessons to learn before the next virus shows up.