I’ve been delving into my crystal balls to see what 2024 will throw at us. It’ll be a year of elections, with Labour winning a snap Westminster General Election after the Scottish nationalists imploded and gifted Sir Keir Starmer much-needed seats to guarantee him the keys of 10 Downing Street.
The Tories will go into free-fall in both the Westminster and local council polls leading to the toppling of current PM Rishi Sunak’s leadership with the Right-wing, eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) (or what’s left of the Tory Right!) dictating who will be the next Conservative boss.
In the Irish Republic, the Shinners will manage to get a successful vote of no confidence in the present Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil administration, triggering an early Dail general election in which the Provisional IRA’s political wing tops the poll in terms of TDs elected.
However, Sinn Fein will need a partner to ensure Mary-Lou McDonald gets the Taoiseach’s post, probably with the help of a smattering of Independent and Hard Left TDs - or even Fianna Fáil turning traitor and climbing into bed with the Provos’ political wing.
In spite of Sinn Fein hopes of an outright majority, the FG/FF’s double whammy of throwing enough cash at Northern Ireland projects and taking the British Government to court over the latter’s legacy legislation will ensure that enough republican voters stay loyal to the FG/FF political shotgun marriage to deny the Shinners that coveted outright majority.
In Ulster, DUP boss Sir Jeffrey Donaldson will get enough votes in his party to ensure the Duppers end their Stormont boycott and trigger the power-sharing Executive.
This will result in a major realignment in Unionism with the UUP and pro-Assembly DUP in one camp, and the Hard Right of the DUP, TUV, Loyal Orders and loyalist paramilitaries in the new No camp.
And although the UK is out of the European Union, well apart from Northern Ireland, there will be a strong campaign by 2016-style Remainers to rejoin the EU.
However, this campaign will run aground when the 2024 European parliamentary elections return massive gains for the Far Right. The EU make-up which the UK first sent its MEPs to in 1979 is no longer the EU which will emerge after this year’s poll.
The Israel/Gaza conflict worsens, but the Donald Trump 2024 Presidential election team proposes an interesting solution - that Israel withdraws from Gaza and a joint SAS/Delta force hit squad goes into Gaza and wipes out the Hamas terrorists - a move that will guarantee Trump the White House once again in late 2024’s election.
Sadly, in retaliation, what’s left of Hamas attacks the UK for the SAS adopting its ‘no prisoners taken’ policy in Gaza and in spite of the UK Government emphasising that ‘British boots were not on the ground’ in the region.
In a panic move as the body count of Hamas terrorists begins to climb, the United Nations will vote to send peace-keeping troops from the Irish Defence Forces into Gaza, sparking the occasional embarrassing incidents of so-called ‘friendly fire’ between the SAS and Irish UN troops.
On a lighter note, in sport, my beloved Gunners will secure their first Premiership title in two decades, and the famous Sam Maguire will be clinched by an Ulster county.
In religious terms, more councils will start to pass increasingly draconian laws to combat the menace of an irresponsible section of the theologically Hard Right fundamentalist street preacher movement, some of whom are nothing more than attention-seekers trying to get themselves arrested so that they can claim to be a modern-day St Stephen, viewed by many Biblical scholars as the first Christian martyr.
As these new draconian rules will apply to all Christians, responsible open air evangelists will have to take a tough stand against the militant fringe which is getting all open air witness tarred with the same irresponsible brush.
Likewise, 2024 will see a widening of the split which has already started in the pro-life movement in terms of their tactics as the distances imposed by the safe access zones are increased. Again, the overall pro-life movement has been infiltrated by hardline fundamentalists who in the past have used extremist ‘in your face’ tactics at health clinics and locations which deal with abortions.
What many of these militant pro-life activists fail to understand is that many of these health locations also deal with other issues, such as women who have lost babies through miscarriages, or are suffering from blood disorders.
Imagine the additional hurt, pain and tears heaped on women who have lost their much-wanted child through miscarriage having to run the gauntlet of militant pro-life extremists waving placards bearing images of unborn children on them? And many of these protestors will call themselves ‘Christian’? As with the street preacher movement, the responsible pro-life movement will suffer as a result of the street militancy of the movement’s lunatic fringe.
And we could see the Education Authority having to implement a similar policy of safe access zones outside our schools as this month sees the launch of compulsory lessons in Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) in post primary schools in Northern Ireland.
Many of these lessons focus on issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Again, as with the pro-life movement, what happens if the anti-RSE movement gets infiltrated by militant fundamentalists who believe in protests outside schools which teach RSE?
Just as folk attending health clinics had to run the gauntlet of militant pro-lifers, could we see the horrific sight of pupils, parents and teachers having to run similar gauntlets by the anti-RSE fundamentalists outside many of our schools?
And returning to the political front, with Stormont back in business as a fully functioning power-sharing parliament with a Sinn Fein First Minister, and with the Irish Unity debate moving further up the agenda, we will see the Alliance Party ‘bounce’ fall flat as the party tears itself apart deciding which way to vote on a future referendum - Irish Unity or the Union? The same lack of direction, this time on Brexit, cost the Ulster Unionist Party its European seat; a seat the UUP had held since 1979.
Given the atrocious and unpredictable weather the Province has endured during last year, especially with the severe flooding, the new Stormont Executive will create a new department for weather with its own minister to help regions cope with the catastrophic effects of rain, hail and storms.
However, like the health portfolio at Stormont, which party or individual has the courage to take on such a challenging role?
The socially conservative wing of the Catholic Church will launch a counter attack to combat the Vatican’s ruling on allowing blessings for same sex relationships. Expect to see a sighting of the Virgin Mary somewhere in Ireland to rally the flocks behind traditional Catholic teaching on marriage, divorce, abortion and homosexuality. My money is on Ballycastle in north Antrim!
As for the Protestant Church, the overall Pentecostal movement will launch another contentious divine healing phenomenon akin to the Toronto Blessing and Florida Outpouring which will see North American-style healing meetings with so-called healers claiming they can raise the dead.
In the meantime, a happy Easter to everyone.
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Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
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