Ten simple predictions for UK politics in 2016
1.Jeremy Corbyn will still be leader of the Labour party and will be more popular (within his party) than ever. He'll try to move more mainstream and will do what he can to pull in moderate MPs to work with him, but his electorate will resist him and ultimately, he'll fail because it's not what his supporters want. While he gets safer...
2....the Labour vote nationwide will have declined. They'll have lost seats in the 2016 council elections and will look more and more unelectable as the party fails to pull in the same direction. Moderate Labour MPs, too weak to push him out, will increase the party's inner strife. But the party will survive 2016 at least.
3.The Conservative party will remain about as popular as it is, but will continue to annoy the general public by not dealing with public school elitism in its ranks, more inner party scandal (though I hope it seriously sorts out the bullying issues) and a growing arrogance caused by the lack of a unified opposition. 2018 will be the year the Conservative party suffers from its arrogance if it doesn't sort it (which it won't).
4.Nigel Farage and UKIP will grow in popularity. Farage is a resilient politician and UKIP is far from being irrelevant. UKIP will grow in strength in the North of England, to the cost of mainly the Labour party. Don't forget, we'll have a referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017 and UKIP will be at the centre of the discussion. It has been waiting for this for a long time.
5.We'll all be bored of various polls of "in or out of Europe", which will be 'neck and neck' until polling day, which if it takes place in 2016, will see a resounding 65% voting to stay in the EU. You read it here first.
6.The Welsh Assembly will go Conservative, Plaid Cymru will continue to be as irrelevant as they currently are and Scotland will become even more dominated by the SNP, to the detriment of Scotland. The Lib Dems will continue their deterioration to non-existence, though we could see one or two moderate Labour party MPs defecting and we will see a lot of discussions over a merger of Lib Dems with a number of Labour moderate MPs who have given up on kicking out Corbyn.
7.The Northern Ireland Assembly elections will pass unnoticed by everyone else in the UK. The Loyalist parties will accuse the nationalist parties of continuing to work with the PIRA and other paramilitaries (which they probably will). The Nationalists will accuse the Loyalist parties of being corrupt (which they probably are). Everyone will continue to be confused by the Alliance party's purpose and there will be some riots/protests over stuff which really shouldn't matter anymore (though it won't be flags this year).
8.Zac Goldsmith will win the mayoral election in London, but the Conservatives won't win a majority in the assembly.
9.Diane Abbot will say something horrible which offends everyone (something else pro-Mao, one of the biggest mass murderers in history), but somehow will get away with it.
10.Boris Johnson will continue to be popular with the electorate and David Cameron will move him into a job to stop him being a threat to George Osbourne which only results in him becoming even more popular with the electorate.
Bonus prediction - Former Labour Councillor Karen Danczuk, noticing her popularity dwindling as people are bored of her bisexualism, cheeky selfies and separation from MP husband, will start working for Babe Station.