Think back 12 months to January 2022. Boris Johnson was prime minister and had resisted calls for a lockdown in response to the Omicron variant of Covid-19. It was assumed inflationary pressure from post-pandemic supply-chain bottlenecks would soon abate. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still several weeks away. There were rumblings of discontent in the Labour party at Sir Keir Starmer’s failure to register a commanding opinion-poll lead.
All of which is a way of making the point that a lot can happen – to the economy and in politics – in the course of a year. And given that the next election is not going to be held until 2024 it would be unwise to assume the next year will be any more predictable.
