Predictions For 2026

Ireland, Spain, The UK, Argentina, and the Middle East

1.

President Catherine Connolly will make an appalling statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day in which she’ll imply, perhaps even state directly, that most of the world’s Jews are today’s Nazis. She’ll also condemn antisemitism in all its forms, of course. Most Irish people will be happy with this.

The Occupied Territories Bill will finally be passed into law and the government will continue to condemn Israel every week. Our tiny Jewish community will continue to be pressured by notional leftists and human rights activists. It will continue to be told to shut up.

Whilst modest steps are planned to beef up the country’s null capacity to defend its neutrality, Ireland will continue to be a parasite on NATO whilst preaching morality to the world and regarding itself as an exemplar of it. The cognitive dissonance required to maintain this position, that Ireland can enjoy the security umbrella provided by others whilst denouncing their alleged moral failings, will continue to pass unremarked.

2.

The media, judicial and political pressure will finally get to Pedro Sánchez and he’ll call a general election towards the middle of the year. This will be the case regardless of whether the PSOE gets good or bad results in the upcoming regional elections; either way they’ll encourage him to go.

The election will produce a PP-Vox government because that’s what the PP is gagging for. Does anyone really think that, presented with a choice of governing with the neo-fascists, or with the PNV, or Junts, it would choose either or both of the latter two over the former?

In the coalition or external support negotiations, the PP will accede to all Vox’s demands, thinking that it will be able to slow-roll or frustrate them entirely in office.

The new government will be hailed as a return to common sense and moderation by much of the anglophone media, which will studiously downplay Vox’s participation in government.

If they don’t get what they want in office, there’s a good chance the neo-fascists will bring down the government. Their real objective isn’t to govern; it’s to remake the political system on Hungarian or Turkish lines, a managed democracy where elections produce predictable results and opposition is gradually strangled.

Come what may, the judicial persecution of Sánchez’s family won’t end. What Enric Juliana calls Madrid DF, the nation’s business, judicial and media power centre, is determined that he be punished through them for having dared to defy it.

3.

In Argentina, Milei’s support will gradually erode as the memory of Kirchnerista inflation fades and the costs of the government’s policies become too difficult to bear. The golden boys running the economy will do whatever is necessary to keep the peso strong against the dollar and so keep the upper middle class and the rich happy, whilst screwing those further down the food chain.

Social discontent has yet to find a viable political vehicle to take on the government. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner continues to have a hard core of support, maybe 30%, but the rest of the population would rather drink battery acid than see her or her nominee in power again. And anyway, she’s 72, serving a six-year sentence for corruption, facing further trials and taking a long time to recover from appendicitis surgery.

The government will continue to use the police to repress discontent, but this will become harder over time, especially as the security protocol which has been used to give the repression a legal basis has just been struck down by a judge, though it remains in force until the government exhausts its appeals.

Meanwhile, Milei himself will continue to display behaviour that would have any other citizen sent for a psychiatric assessment, like showing up in meetings dressed as an oil rig worker for no detectable reason, or engaging in bizarre public performances of various sorts.

The Financial Times and The Economist will continue to describe him as colourful and a bold reformer, their commitment to free-market ideology trumping any concern about democratic norms or mental stability.

4.

The UK will continue to splash helplessly in the mire of isolation into which it jumped of its own accord. Labour has done some positive things in government (improved rights for workers and renters, for example), but its attacks on immigrants have placed it beyond the pale for many in its core constituency. They’ll vote for the Lib Dems or Greens next time around.

Much of the notionally cosmopolitan commentariat and expert class still sees the UK as a great and special country which is entitled to uniquely generous terms from the EU. Nearly a decade on from the fateful referendum and there’s no sign of significant erosion of that belief. The fantasy of Britain as a global player rather than a medium-sized, European nation continues to distort political discourse and policy-making.

5.

Wars have unpleasant outcomes. The outcome of the Israel-Hamas war is that Israel will continue to occupy a large part of Gaza not just for 2026 but for the foreseeable future. Hamas won’t disarm in the part it controls and no international force will make it. The population will continue to live in misery.

Netanyahu is in the process of fixing the commission of inquiry into the 7 October catastrophe to absolve himself and blame the security forces. Appointments to their senior ranks will be ever more conditional on loyalty to his person. By doing so he’ll gradually damage their effectiveness, but for now, he has the benefit of an officer corps that is the product of decades of professional development and bitter lessons learnt in previous conflicts.

The 12-Day War left Iran’s military capacities severely weakened, but it will move heaven and earth to restore them, as will Israel to make sure it can’t. A second round of open fighting between the two states is very likely. And in due course a third, and a fourth…

At least in theory, the Israel-Palestine conflict could be solved by negotiations, but there are no possible negotiations that would end the Iran-Israel conflict, as the mere existence of the latter is repugnant to the regime that runs the former. There’s no territorial dispute or mixed populations. Iran is motivated by pure ethnoreligious hatred, a fact that many Western analysts persistently refuse to acknowledge, preferring to frame Iranian hostility as a response to Israeli actions rather than as an ideological commitment.

6.

The year ahead promises more of what we’ve already seen: the continued hollowing out of democratic norms and a drift towards authoritarian populism dressed up as common sense. Ireland will continue to offer moral sermons whilst depending on others for security. Spain will likely lurch rightward into a PP-Vox coalition. Argentina will discover whether Milei’s circus act can survive long-term contact with its social costs. Britain will remain trapped in its post-Brexit delusions.

…

Happy New Year to all my readers, especially those with paid subscriptions.