In Competition 3380 you were invited to send in your predictions for 2025 in verse form. The entries suggested that not everyone is enchanted at the prospect of what the year may have in store. But absurdity flourished too, as in Ralph Goldswain’s fantasy that Keir Starmer will enter Eurovision in a glittery suit, while Hamish Wilson offered a set of unlikely scenarios: ‘Putin bangs the drum for peace,/ Pearson joins the woke police.’ Hats off also to Jasmine Jones, Joseph Houlihan, Frank McDonald, Brians Murdoch and Allgar, Tracy Davidson and others. I wish you all a happy new year, and let it be one in which WW3 and Antipodean fleas etc don’t feature.
’Twill be the year that Paddington is knighted,
How well Sir Bear’s hard stares improve the land,
James Bond starts mindful yoga and Pilates,
To show he cares, is kind, can understand.
And Taylor Swift will run for public office,
Boot out D. Trump and make the White House shimmer,
Mammoths return to life (not those in power),
Ozempic will turn deep-fried doughnuts slimmer.
AI solves multitudes of famous mysteries,
While climate change sends all the Highlands warm,
Bikinis – tartan – rule as the new fashion,
Loch Ness becomes the latest Benidorm.
Elon will take a rocket bound for Venus,
Rebranding it as ZX-double-Y,
We welcome 2025, that milestone,
When even off-screen wonders multiply.
Janine Beacham
Interest rates rising and business stagnation;
Mandatory pronouns but no job creation;
A crash that results in a Footsy nosedive –
Recession is coming in 2-0-2-5.
Concreted greenbelt and Middle East truceless;
Rayner triumphant and Badenoch useless;
Putin and Donald will start to connive –
Disasters are coming in 2-0-2-5.
Donbas abandoned (since Lammy’s dim-witted);
Losing the Ashes while Sturgeon’s acquitted;
Goodness knows how we are going to survive
Everything coming in 2-0-2-5.
When the tax bites, when the bill’s large,
When they raid my purse –
I’ll simply remember that Starmer’s in charge,
And then I’ll just feel … much worse.
Tom Adam
Twenty-twenty-five? You’ll be rewarded
with the hottest year that’s ever been recorded.
Ring in the New – announcing that we’ll fry,
that climate change will hit an all-time high,
the Arctic air will reach a rolling boil
while Trump is shouting, ‘Dig, man, dig for oil!’
Prepare for flooding, save your valued things
and batten hatches, grab your water-wings.
A stinging start: the Waspis will rebel
and join, hi-ho, the farmers in the dell,
and everyone will be on strike, for sure,
while more than half the world will be at war.
But cheer up, guys, this year will see a race
to reach the furthest limits out in space –
there’s time to hitch a lift and then, by heck,
we’ll find another planet we can wreck!
Sylvia Fairley
What fresh madness will we have to confront
In 2025? Let me take a punt.
Vladimir Putin will try and nuke us,
Ed Miliband will COP off with Caroline Lucas
Or could it be the other way round, who knows?
Meanwhile frenzied speculation grows
That the robotic PM isn’t really human at all
And that AI has been used to install
An android in Number Ten, although to be fair,
With his stilted demeanour and synthetic hair,
It’s always been hard to tell the difference with Keir,
And the voters who’ve had it up to here
With the cyborg and his climate Jeremiah
Will hail the advent of a new Messiah.
Who might that be? I only said I’d take a punt,
But I’ve a feeling it will be another… bloke.
Sue Pickard
I’ve gazed into my crystal ball
But next year barely starts at all,
Just twenty days of Biden and then BOOM!
Yes, there are scandals, trends and crimes,
Keir Starmer resets several times,
But then the briefest brightness signals doom.
Thereafter, it’s first fire, then freeze,
And such Antipodean fleas
As skipped the War that brought the world low
Have cooling flesh on which to feast –
For we, once first, become the least.
What happens next my crystal will not show.
Adrian Fry
Our crystal ball is somewhat Delphic but
it offers up these thoughts for ’25.
For half the year the Dartford Tunnel’s shut.
Endangered corncrakes multiply and thrive.
Clarkson abandons farming and TV.
A Fair Isle knitter wins the Turner Prize.
The next Named Storm turns back, heads out to sea.
It’s Westminster-sur-Mer as levels rise.
Now HS2 becomes a cycle way.
Liz Truss plays panto, makes a new career.
The Loch Ness Monster’s photographed at play.
Ed Davey makes a first-rate gondolier.
Musk gives his fortune to new libraries.
The UK’s future’s shaped by the I Ching
and all MPs packed off to monasteries.
The flying pigs? Oh yes, still on the wing.
D.A. Prince
No. 3383: Out of this world
You are invited to write a Tripadvisor-type review by an alien (English-speaking) who has been visiting Earth for the first time, 150 words maximum. Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 15 January. From the end of the month the prizes will take the form of £25 John Lewis vouchers (an alternative will be sorted out for winners not in the UK). Please do carry on sending in your excellent entries.
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