The crystal ball for 2020 may be cloudy – but this is what I predict for the year ahead

Ever since I inherited this cracked crystal ball from my late colleague Alan Watkins, it has failed to function well. It was in fine working order when he used it to compile his end-of-year almanack of predictions for the following year, but in recent years it has grown increasingly erratic.

Last year, I remember, it went so wrong that it showed an indistinct image of one of the country’s most eminent lawyers in a green kimono, wielding a baseball bat in a London garden with apparently murderous intent. Naturally, I ignored it.

So this year, I present predictions for 2020 with trepidation. I have my doubts about the forecast for November in particular. I am not sure that the royal family would ever take Greta Thunberg that seriously.

What will happen in January, however, is not much in doubt. The Labour Party will hold a lot of meetings, mostly in convenient central London locations, with titles such as “Where Now for the Left?”, “Can Labour Ever Win Again?” and “The Semiotics of Class in Rebecca Long Bailey’s Decision to Drop the Hyphen in Her Name”.

Ed Miliband will be sacked from the commission of inquiry into Labour’s election failure when it emerges that he doesn’t know which county his own northern constituency is in.

The sensation of the early stage of the Labour leadership contest will be the candidacy of Nadia Whittome, the 23-year-old new MP who pledged to donate half her parliamentary salary to local Nottingham charities. Twitter will be full of old codgers complaining that “Whittome for Britain” doesn’t even rhyme.

As the last bong of Big Ben at 11pm on 31 January dies away, a government lawyer will realise to their horror that they forgot to transpose a vital section of EU law into the withdrawal act. The UK’s departure will therefore be unlawful and the nation will be in legal limbo.

In February, the weather will be the sole topic of the national conversation, and in particular Piers Corbyn’s theories about how the global warming conspiracy was responsible for his brother’s election defeat.

In March, the Labour Party will elect a new leader, but all I can see in the crystal ball is “Made in China”. In April, Lord Goldsmith, the new chancellor of the exchequer, will present the delayed Budget, the centrepiece of which will be a tax cut for all, paid for out of his personal fortune.

In May, Sadiq Khan will be re-elected mayor of London and no one will care, except Rory Stewart, who will immediately announce his campaign to stand in a Scottish parliament by-election with a view to defeating Nicola Sturgeon at the next Holyrood elections.

In June and July, there will be cricket, which will prompt introspection, nostalgia and some fine sports writing. In August, there will be a complicated sex scandal involving a cabinet minister, a pop star and a bishop. As Watkins used to say, these are deep waters and we shall move on.

In September, Baroness Arcuri will admit that her plans to roll out gigabit broadband to every constituency that changed hands at the election have fallen behind schedule because an intern in her office had failed to change the necessary hashtags.

In October, Boris Johnson will thank Lord Maugham, the new president of the UK Supreme Court, for its helpful ruling that the country has in fact left the EU. The case will conclude after months of wrangling at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, in which the UK will be represented by Geoffrey Cox. His final summing up, in Norman French quatrains, will become an instant classic of modern jurisprudence.

According to opinion polls, however, public opinion will increasingly be of the view that Britain has left the EU in name only, after a plan to have the prime minister arrive on the Conservative Party conference platform by zip wire was ruled contrary to health and safety rules by Sunderland city council.

At this point, the contents of the crystal ball become hard to make out. It may be a snow globe after all, and I may have shaken it in a misguided attempt to see more clearly. Perhaps there will be a white Christmas on 25 December 2020. One thing that can be predicted is that the next day will be renamed Foxing Day.

A happy, prosperous and sustainable new year to all.