2011 predictions

My predictions for this year

1) The coalition will hold together. After all it's a coalition of views not everyone has to agree all the time and the sensible people in both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats know that being in government in coalition with compromise is better than not being in government.

2) Ed Milliband will become more effective as opposition leader, not because he himself will become more effective but because his team will. You only have to look at how reactive his new Comms team has been to Bookstart and other stories since they were in place (and technically they don't start until the new year)

3) Inflation will become an issue (see this week's spectator for why it really already is) which probably means an interest rate rise and perhaps falling house prices (especially if house building gets off the ground and supply is increased).

4) There won't be a reshuffle, and certainly not of Secretaries of State in the major departments. Most ministers such as Gove, Lansley, Pickles and Duncan-Smith and their teams know their briefs inside out and have shadowed them for years. They have passion for their areas and are determined to deliver the headline reforms necessary.

5) Gove will go back on something else, probably another spending cut which will make delivering his CSR settlement difficult.

6) the AV referendum will fail to ignite the interest of the public until the last minute. This will mainly be driven by a lack of media interest, until the last minute when they start running stories about how uninterested the public is in it.

7) A devolution of power through the localism agenda will be seen by the media to have failed somewhere when one area gets something another doesn't. Postcode lottery will be screamed by the headlines and the left will scream that this is why we need central control and targets. The government will wobble on its commitment to localism as a result but will pull through it after a cohort of new backbenchers lead the charge against the old guard.

So all in all it's going to be a tough year but all in all a good one.

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