predictions

Some predictions for 2026

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As per the past couple of years, I try to channel my inner Mystic Meg, and come up with some predictions for the new year. Last year’s were mostly on target, although some were rather low-ball predictions.

Bradford City will win promotion

I don’t really follow football or support a team, but as my employer currently sponsors their stadium, I check up on how Bradford City AFC are doing on a regular basis. And at the moment, they’re doing quite well; I’m writing this ahead of time but they’re currently third in League One. If they managed to finish the season as one of the top two teams, or win the playoffs, then they’ll win promotion to the Championship, having only been promoted to League One last season. The last time they were in the second tier of English football was in 2003-4.

A big AI firm will go bust

There have been warning signs that the AI ‘bubble’ will burst soon. I certainly think that a ‘market correction’ is likely, and one of the big AI firms will go bust. Indeed, there’s a web site called Pop The Bubble which asks Google Gemini each day when the bubble will burst. At one point, on the 19th December, it predicted the bubble would burst the very next day, but more recently it has revised its projections to some time around September.

Certainly OpenAI, probably the best known AI company, is in trouble – its operating costs far exceed its income. So much so that answers may start including sponsored content. I wouldn’t be surprised that it reaches a point where it runs out of money and its investors get cold feet. That could happen this year, but we’ll see.

There will be some kind of ceasefire in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine will have been running for four years by next month, and both sides have suffered heavy losses. The BBC estimate that 160,000 Russians have been killed, and the real total may be double that. Overall, something like half a million people have lost their lives in the war across both sides.

What the ceasefire will look like remains to be seen. I see Russia as very much the aggressor here, and rewarding it with territory that was part of Ukraine doesn’t seem just, in my mind. Certainly, Ukraine hasn’t wanted to cede territory, but to stop the war it may have to – at least, for now.

The World Cup will be overshadowed by politics

Hosting of this year’s Men’s Association Football World Cup is split between Mexico, Canada and the USA this year, with the USA hosting the majority of games. However, I expect the USA’s new immigration rules for people applying for ESTA could backfire. I expect a tense political situation as various celebrities or politicians find themselves turned away at US airports or denied visas, and the diplomatic fallout that this could create.

I’m pleased that Scotland qualified as well as England this time, and Wales and the Republic of Ireland are potentially still in the running. I doubt I’ll be watching the matches – as mentioned, football isn’t really my thing and the time difference means that some of the matches are likely to be late at night UK time.

Rolled over predictions

I’m also going to roll over a couple of previous predictions:

  • Labour will do poorly in local elections
  • Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

As a member of the Labour party, I hope it turns a corner this year, but I doubt it’ll manage it in time for the local elections in late spring. As for Twitter/X, I expect it’ll stagnate and Elon Musk will continue to be a terrible person, but it’ll neither shut down, be sold off or launch any major new features.

Some predictions for 2025

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Last January, I wrote a series of predictions for 2024, and had mixed success. So, I’m going to try again in 2025 – let’s see how these work out.

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

I’m recycling this prediction from last year, as it didn’t happen then, and I doubt it’ll happen in 2025 either. Elon Musk is apparently going to co-lead Donald Trump’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ or ‘DOGE’, the name presumably chosen because Elon’s sense of humour hasn’t caught up with his age. So he’ll have more on his plate, and at a time when large numbers of people have left X which will affect advertising revenue. Remember that a lot of the money Elon used to buy Twitter (as-was) was loaned, and he’ll need to start paying those loans back at some point. Having briefly looked at Twitter again this morning, the adverts I saw were for mostly unknown companies, some of which had Community Notes attached to them basically stating they’re a scam. So that’s going well.

I still don’t think Elon will sell X this year, but I expect it’ll largely stagnate again.

Donald Trump will be terrible in ways we haven’t foreseen

Trump has already outlined what he plans to do when he’s back in office as US President. I expect some of those policies to be weakened or dropped entirely; even though the Republicans once again control both the Senate and House of Representatives, but the recent deal to avoid a government shutdown suggests they may not always vote as a contiguous block. And not necessarily in the way that Trump wants either.

But I also expect that there are things we don’t yet know about that Trump will react to in the worst way imaginable.

Trump and Musk will have a public fall-out

Musk’s control of X, and massive donations in the run-up to the election seemed to have allowed him to curry favour of Trump – hence Musk being allowed to co-lead DOGE. But I also expect that their egos will clash, and only one of these two people will be President. What the impact of this will be remains to be seen but I can’t help but see Elon as something of an Icarus character at present.

Labour will do poorly in local elections

There’s a likelihood of local elections on the 1st May 2025, although most of these are for county councils which the government is proposing to abolish, so some areas may have elections after all. Labour’s popularity has dive-bombed since winning the 2024 general election, as the government has introduced some unpopular policies. It’s a tactic that may pay off – the next general election may not be until 2029. But I imagine some people who voted Labour last time may be tempted to vote for other parties. And most of the council seats being defended are currently held by the Conservatives.

Reform UK, the party led by Nigel Farage, managed to return five MPs last year and is hoping to make gains in the local council elections too. And there’s a possibility of a massive cash injection from Musk to give them more resources to do this. I can see Reform putting up a strong challenge to Labour and the Conservatives in some seats. Whether they’ll win any, or just split the vote, remains to be seen.

There won’t be a General Election in 2025

Okay, this is a very easy prediction to make. General elections in the UK need to happen approximately every five years, and so the next one isn’t scheduled to 2029, as mentioned above. But governments can call early ones, and indeed this happened in 2017 and 2019.

The only reason why I’m including it here is because 3 million people have (apparently) signed a petition calling for a general election, and it’s currently the most popular petition. There will be a debate about this on Tuesday 6th January, apparently, but most likely in Westminster Hall and not the House of Commons.

The overall situation in the Middle East will improve

I don’t know if there will be a ceasefire in Gaza this year; I hoped for one last year, and it didn’t come to pass. But the situation in Syria is, at long last, encouraging, and I hope that the region as a whole stabilises.

Well, we’ll see what happens at the end of the year.

Reviewing my 2024 predictions

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So, back in January, I made seven predictions about events that would take place in 2024. So, seeing as there’s just a few days left in 2024, let’s see how I did:

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

Remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022 that it would become X, the ‘everything app’? I predicted that this wouldn’t happen in 2024, and, so far, it hasn’t. I don’t use X anymore, although I keep my account live, and upon logging in to write this, the only new things I could see were some kind of job search, and Grok, its AI ChatGPT competitor. This is a far cry from apps like WeChat.

One of the few things that Elon Musk is actually good at is over-promising and under-delivering, so this isn’t surprising. But X was supposed to be able to offer all sorts of new functionality, including financial services, if Musk were to be believed.

Labour will win the 2024 General Election

Yes, they did. But any other result was unlikely, to be fair. It has been a rocky ride since then, with Labour front-loading their time in power with unpopular policies like the limits on the Winter Fuel Payments. However, with the next general election not due until 2029, there’s time to re-build.

What I didn’t expect was how well the Liberal Democrats ended up doing in the election. Their tactics of concentrating on seats mainly in the south west massively paid off, with one of their best ever results.

There will be a ceasefire in Palestine

Nope, sadly. We’re over a year in now, and fighting continues. The recent regime change in Syria is a potential bright spot though.

But the war in Ukraine will continue

Yes, sadly. But it’s notable that things are not going well for Russia, with forces being drafted in from North Korea. That’s because Russia is rapidly running out of people fit to fight on the front in Ukraine, as shown by its massive fall in unemployment.

Energy prices in the UK will start to fall again

They did, and then they started going back up again in October, by around 10%. Overall, Brits are still paying significantly more for energy than we were a few years ago, although there are at least a wider range of tariffs available now.

The UK will do okay at Eurovision this year

No, we didn’t really. We came 18th out of 25th, with all the points coming from professional juries and none from the voting public. I was hoping we would do better, with Olly Alexander representing us, but I don’t think it was the best song.

Trump won’t win the US Presidential Election

Oh dear, a big no. Honestly, in the run-up to the election I though Kamala Harris had it in the bag, so I was surprised and disappointed that she didn’t win.

So, overall, half of my predictions were (mostly) correct. Which isn’t bad, although clearly there were some that I wanted to be correct but weren’t. Oh well.

Some predictions for 2024

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An AI-generated image of some felt art of a fortune teller with a crystal ball that says 2024 on it

Now that the year has started, I’m going to make some predictions for the rest of 2024. If only because it’ll be interesting to look back in a year’s time to see what actually happens.

Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

When the overly impulsive billionaire took over Twitter, he announced that it would become an ‘everything app’, like WeChat is in China. Essentially, he’s using his Twitter acquisition to realise his late 1990s dream for x.com, which would offer a huge variety of financial services.

But Musk also has a track record for over-promising and under-delivering. Look at the ‘full self driving’ mode offered on his Tesla cars, which, well, isn’t. His other firms, like The Boring Company, have also scaled down their lofty plans. So I don’t expect X/Twitter to offer much more than it does now by the end of the year.

I expect the core social media aspect of X/Twitter to continue to whither away over the year, thanks to declining user interest and lower advertising revenue. However, I still expect it to be around by the end of 2024 – I don’t think Musk is ready to throw in the towel and shut it down, or sell it at a massive loss.

Labour will win the 2024 General Election

We know that there will be a General Election in the UK this year, although not precisely when it’ll happen. Labour consistently leads in the polls, and has had some unprecedented by-election victories. I don’t think we’re looking at a repeat of 1997, when Labour won by a landslide, but I would expect a comfortable majority. How much change a new Labour government would be able to make partly depends on when the election is, but I’m not expecting the state of the country to massively improve by the end of the year.

Oh, and Sadiq Khan will win a third term as Mayor of London.

There will be a ceasefire in Palestine

Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on the 8th October has to be condemned, but Israel’s response has been despicable with thousands of innocent civilians losing their lives. I expect Israel to find itself increasingly isolated on the world stage and a ceasefire will be inevitable by the spring of 2024. Unfortunately, I can’t see it being a route to lasting peace in the region, but any reduction in hostilities has to be better than this.

But the war in Ukraine will continue

I’m less optimistic about the war in Ukraine, which has been largely at a stalemate for the whole of 2023. Russia still intends to hang on to the territory that it has seized, including Crimea, whilst Ukraine hasn’t been able to make major advances. Meanwhile political issues in the USA mean that funding for Ukraine to carry on fighting isn’t guaranteed.

Energy prices in the UK will start to fall again

It will be a few days before we get official confirmation from the National Grid, but I’m calling it now: 2023 was the year renewables overtook fossil fuels as the largest contributor to British electricity generation. In the 12 years I’ve been running National Grid: Live at grid.iamkate.com electricity generation from fossil fuels has fallen from an average of 25.1GW to 10.2GW, while renewables have risen from 2.5GW to 10.8GW.

— Kate Morley (@kate) 2023-12-31T12:14:09.211Z

In 2023, the UK generated more electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels, for the first time. Whilst UK consumer energy prices went up by 5% on Monday, I anticipate that the cost of electricity will start to fall as more renewable power sources come online. The newly-operational Viking Link Interconnector means that we can trade electricity with Denmark, and the biggest wind farm in Scotland is now online.

That being said, there’s an imbalance in the UK as most wind power is generated in the north of England and Scotland, but the highest demand is in the south of England. And our energy grid doesn’t have capacity to move this, which means that some northern wind turbines have to be turned off and gas-fired power stations turned on – costing money and contributing to climate change. However, there’s been a big up-tick in home solar installations like ours which may help, albeit on a small scale.

The UK will do okay at Eurovision this year

In 2023, the Eurovision song contest was hosted in Liverpool. The 2022 winners Ukraine couldn’t host it safely due to the ongoing war, and the UK came second – our best result for over 20 years. And then despite what I thought was a good song from Mae Muller, we came second-from-bottom.

For 2024, Olly Alexander is representing the UK. As lead singer of Years & Years, I have some high expectations. I doubt we’ll win, but I would disappointed if we’re not mid-table. Of course, we haven’t actually heard the song yet.

Trump won’t win the US Presidential Election

Trump will almost certainly become the Republican Party’s candidate for president, but with two states banning him from their ballots, his campaign isn’t going well. I know Biden isn’t terribly popular, and wish he had stepped aside for someone younger like Kamala Harris, but Trump has made it pretty clear that if he wins (and manages to get a decent Republican Senate and House majority) then he will take the US down a path of authoritarianism that will take a lot of time to unpick. And whilst millions of Americans seem to be okay with this, I doubt it’s the majority.

We also don’t yet know what impact Trump’s legal issues will have, or whether the Federal Supreme Court will overrule Colorado and Maine’s bans. I didn’t think Trump would get elected in 2016, and so I have been wrong about this before, but I hope people’s experiences of 2017-2021 will guide them to vote against him again.

So these are my predictions for 2024. We’ll see at the end of the year whether they happen or not. Meanwhile, have a look at some other predictions from Terence Eden and Diamond Geezer.

My predictions for today’s Apple event

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Invite to Apple's 10th September event

Today Apple is announcing something, at around 6pm BST. It’s probably the seventh iteration of the iPhone, and the rumours suggest that this is the case, but until Tim Cook steps up on stage this evening we won’t know for sure.

I’ve got a few predictions, mostly based on the rumours that I’ve been reading over the past few weeks. I don’t actively seek out rumours but they do appear on sites like The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Twitter from time to time. So here’s what I expect:

Two new iPhone models, including a budget model

There are credible rumours that Apple will release two new models of the iPhone today – a new iPhone 5S, and a cheaper iPhone 5C. The 5S will probably have the same form factor as the existing iPhone 5 but have some extra hardware features and a beefed-up processor – possibly the A6X as used in the fourth-generation iPad but maybe a new A7 processor. I also believe the rumours of a fingerprint scanner on the home button.

The iPhone 5C will be a cheaper and more plasticy model that will be particularly aimed at emerging markets like China, but I think it will also do well in western markets. I know there are people out there who want to buy an iPhone but can’t justify the cost, and don’t want an old model.

The iPhone 4, 4S and iPad 2 will be retired

The three year old iPhone 4 is sure to be retired but I expect the 4S to go, and the iPad 2. This will mean that all of Apple’s mobile products will use the Lightning connector, rather than the 30-pin Dock connector, and all of its phones will have the same screen size.

The iPod Classic will be retired

It’s been 4 years since the last update to the iPod Classic, which is the only remaining iPod model to include a hard disk (as opposed to flash memory). Wired thinks it’ll be dropped and I agree. I hope that a new 128 GB iPod Touch will be released, so that Apple can still cater for those who want to be able to play their entire large music collection on the go.

Neither of the new iPhones will have NFC

NFC, or near-field communication, is becoming standard on many Android and Windows phones. But I can’t see Apple adopting it. They’ll go for Bluetooth SMART instead. Because the iPhone already has Bluetooth, this shouldn’t require any new hardware, and should be better for battery life too.

According to this AppleInsider article, this will be branded as iBeacons in iOS 7, and will be available not only in Apple’s new handsets, but the existing iPhone 4S and 5 as well.

Third-party apps for the Apple TV

Okay, this is less a prediction and more of a hope. Apple has been steadily increasing the number of platform partners for the Apple TV but it’s still very US-centric. The only UK channel available at present is Sky News.

I hope that Apple opens an App Store for the Apple TV, opening the door to apps such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD, Demand 5, ITV Player, Now TV and the like. This will make the device significantly more useful.

We will find out in just over eight hours’ time what comes to pass.