By Max Hastings
Last updated at 3:57 AM on 1st January 2011


Come on, admit it: 2010 was not a bad year, if you did not live in flooded Pakistan or hold BP shares, and as long as you were not Gordon Brown or an Aussie cricket fan or have a teenager due to start university in a couple of years.

We had four proper seasons, including a marvellous spring and (for southerners at least) a pretty good summer. We dumped a disastrous Labour government and installed a prime minister who behaves like a proper national leader.

Millions of people worldwide fell in love with the iPad. Electronic books took off big-time, as did 3D cinema with the help of Avatar. Prince William pleased everyone by getting engaged to a pretty girl, and his wedding should provide a welcome boost to traditional Christian family values. The Stock Market soared.

Out with a bang: London saw out the old year with a fireworks display on the River Thames. But what will 2011 bring?

Out with a bang: London saw out the old year with a fireworks display on the River Thames. But what will 2011 bring?

Samantha Cameron had a baby and some of us cringed as Elton John bought himself one for Christmas. Downton Abbey made toffs seem almost human, and won ratings almost as startling as those for The X-Factor.

Two of the most tiresome human beings on the planet, Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan, made Britain a better place by leaving it for America. Footie fans exulted at the spectacle of Chelsea, owned by Russian moneybags Roman Abramovich, ending the year in decline.

But we must also acknowledge the bad bits: bankers gave us new reasons to hate them, including my own, who bounced the debit card with which I was trying to buy my wife's Christmas present.

Ed Miliband snatched the leadership of the Labour Party to spite his older brother, but having got the job now seems unable to think what to do with it.

Fifa gave Russia the 2014 World Cup — surely not because some of its members preferred a credit in their Swiss bank accounts to a nice smile from Prince William?

The LibDems, for decades indulged as the nation's silly party, announced that they were getting sensible and joining a coalition, but continued being pretty silly anyway, and lost most of their voters.

George Osborne became Miss Whiplash to present us with vouchers for four years' flagellation. Almost everybody agrees that government spending cuts will be good for Britain, but the Chancellor is likely to receive fewer Christmas cards once the binmen stop calling every week.

Revolting students reminded us how ugly and unsympathetic they can be, while London Tube workers staged a series of pointless strikes in rehearsal for much bigger demonstrations of union bullying, greed and folly next year.

America's Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives in November's mid-term elections, and dug itself into a Right-wing hole: the dominance of Sarah Palin and her moose-hunting friends offers Barack Obama his best chance of re-election in 2012.

His ice-cool style of leadership disappoints many people around the world who hoped for more, but America's flagging economy remains a blight on Obama's presidency.

The British Army continued to show its familiar heroism and determination in the struggle to bring peace and stability to Afghans who remain stubbornly reluctant to accept these good things. The intelligence services frustrated several alleged attempts by British Muslim radicals to unleash terrorist atrocities.

The Coalition Government looked no more likely than its Labour predecessor to impose serious curbs on immigration. The euro tottered: financial crises in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal emphasised the lunacy of harnessing their rackety economies to that of mighty Germany.

Now, your morale may have slumped a bit on being reminded of some of the events mentioned above. But every year brings its share of follies, tragedies, disappointments and natural disasters, and lots of us managed to have a jolly good time regardless.

Poll after poll shows that while many British people think the country is going to the dogs, they remain amazingly happy in their own lives. There is still a crowd of cheerful and often laughing faces in the pubs, as there was in the streets before Christmas, even as we struggled with the snow.

A month ago on this page, I wrote about some doomsters I had met who feared the worst for the West amid the blunderings of those who run the financial system, and our ever-harsher struggle to compete with Asia.

But hope is essential to the human condition, especially in hard times; we must get busy squirrelling away supplies of it, to see us through 2011.

Higher taxes, government spending cuts and rising unemployment will take their toll on almost every family in the land. Most of us recognise that this country could not have continued as it was, with a vast bloated state sector spending countless billions more than Britain earned.

We must now take the pain for the Blair and Brown years, knowing that only thus can we get the nation back on track towards a decent future.

The money simply does not exist, to keep funding New Labour's fantasy Britain, where every third worker is doing a non-profit-making job. Never forget that even if the Government cuts its promised 500,000 public sector posts, this will amount to barely half the extra state employees Gordon Brown hired between 2002 and 2010.

Government cuts will be real enough, but they will also become the excuse advanced by every public service spokesman to explain why the snow has not been cleared, classrooms are short of teachers, NHS operations delayed or policemen lacking to control demos. It will be hard for people to work out which failures of public services are really down to George Osborne, and which should properly be blamed on the state sector's career bunglers.

As the Government feels the heat, it will be remarkable if 2011 passes without LibDem MPs defecting to the opposition benches. Some of us predicted last May that Nick Clegg, by joining a coalition, had exchanged a few years in power for the destruction of his own party, and that still seems the way to bet.

David Cameron has achieved a remarkable personal authority which will probably secure his tenancy of Downing Street for two terms, the second as an explicitly Tory prime minister if he is lucky.

Clegg and some other LibDems will cling to Cameron's coat-tails because they now have nowhere else to go. But Vince Cable will soon have more time for his dancing, and there seems no reason to expect the LibDems' rock-bottom poll ratings to improve.

It is easy to see why people will back the Tories or Labour come next election, but not why they should waste votes on Cleggy's lot.

This year will pass like last, without a brick being laid towards creation of a new generation of the nuclear power stations that Britain so urgently needs. The LibDem Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, is a turbine fanatic who says he will start more nuclear plants only if these can be built without the subsidies that wind, wave and solar technologies receive.

In the short term, a surge in world gas production will keep our lights on. But I am convinced that the Coalition's energy policies are irresponsibly feeble, and will prompt a power crisis by the end of the decade. Already, the huge extra cost of green energy is making Britain's shrinking industries ever less competitive.

With interest rates set to remain low, 2011 will be another rotten year for savers, who will be lucky to earn two per cent on money in the bank, against 5 per cent real inflation. To add insult to injury, the Government will steal a further slice of these meagre returns in taxes. Bankers will remain the only people who profit from the activities of banks; ministers will continue to wrestle with the intractable politics of preserving Britain's financial services industry, while preventing the greed of those who work in it from provoking a voters' revolt.

There will be a flood of Olympic scare-stories: about security, facilities behind schedule, tottering transport links, whingeing athletes. I was no enthusiast for the Olympic bid, because I feared what the Games will cost.But now they are close to happening, I have become an enthusiast.

Fingers tightly crossed, it seems that preparations are being made with astonishing efficiency, and even — so far — without a budget crisis. It is vital for Britain to create a 2012 Olympic triumph, and maybe we can pull it off.

After two decades in which we have been able to buy consumer goods from China fantastically cheaply — a washing-machine costs less than many women pay for a dress — prices will start rising. For Chinese workers are sick of sweating for starvation wages.

Factory protests and strikes are becoming commonplace; Beijing this week increased its minimum wage by 25 per cent. The days of bargain-basement-priced technology in Oxford Street may be numbered.

Meanwhile, among many tentative predictions for this year, here is a confident one; I shall not drink Chateau Lafite, now the cost of the 2009 vintage has passed 300 a bottle. To be honest, I have never bought Lafite in my life, but it is fascinating to watch the price soar, now that top claret has become a status symbol among Chinese millionaires.

Look out for new WikiLeaks, and more serious, for a steady growth of computer hacking and cyber-warfare. The Chinese and Russians are attacking Western networks ever more frequently, a symptom of rivalry between nations which will become a major feature of the 21st century. It offers a means of undermining enemies without provoking a war, and will lead to considerable trouble in our computer-ruled societies.

Only a fool would suggest that most British people will feel as well off financially in 2011 as in 2010, because we face a harsh, bitter stint of repaying the cash the last Labour government squandered in our name. I hope the country shows itself staunch amid government spending cuts, especially when the unions start the inevitable disruptive industrial action they are promising for Easter.

Documents released this week from the National Archive emphasise the importance of Margaret Thatcher's stance as the Iron Lady in the harsh times of 1981, and her modern successor will need to show equal fortitude. David Cameron's New Year message suggests that he is indeed holding his nerve.

The consequences of bowing to the unions and failing to cut the Government's vast deficit would be dire: we must endure these austerity years, to come out the other side fit to earn a living as a nation. Even as families feel the squeeze, we must keep reminding ourselves that Britain remains an exceptionally prosperous and pleasant place to live — which is why so many foreigners queue to come here. 

I do not think my old friend Michael Heseltine will mind my quoting a remark he made to me a few months ago. Unbelievably, he is now 77. 'I don't want to die,' he said, 'because there are so many wonderful and exciting things happening in the world, and I want to see how they turn out.'

Of course it is true that Michael is an unusually talented and lucky man, who has created a very privileged life for himself. But his enthusiasm moved me very much, and made me determine to follow his example.

2011 will be a year in which we shall sometimes have to struggle to remember that the glass is half-full. But if ever there is a day for optimism, this is it: Happy New Year.

 

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