Trigger Warning!

UK politics! Weather! Forecasting!

Here is my forecast for the next nine months in the UK.

Torrential rain will continue to fall.

Until, suddenly, it stops. Completely. For the rest of the year.

The dry season will begin. The land will be parched. Crops will dry up in the fields. Wildfires will rage across the Scottish Highlands.

[No! They won’t! Not the Scottish Highlands!]

Shock! Horror! Public Enquiry!
It will emerge that the water companies have failed to catch a single drop of rain-water during this present wet season. Hosepipes will be banned. Stand-pipes will be installed in high streets. Water will be rationed.

It will further emerge that the water companies have been running a lucrative business taking in other countries’ sewage, for disposal, and pumping it onto our beaches and dried-up river-beds.

There will be calls for a public enquiry. There will be an argument about whether the public enquiry should be an independent public enquiry. A retired judge will be appointed to head the public enquiry. Nothing more will be heard from the public enquiry.

Making sure
Various strains of foreign knotweed will be spotted growing in our dried-up river-beds. It will emerge that these alien plants are (a) very hardy and (b) very invasive and (c) poisonous to cows, sheep and horses.

Ministers will say “We must make sure something is done.” Nothing will be done.

The government will say that it has “already spent six billion on ensuring that something is done”. Nothing will be done.

Barbie 2 will launch in cinemas across the UK. It will be announced that Barbie 3 is in development.

Nine “red wall” Conservative MPs will defect to the Labour Party. Three will defect to the Liberal Democrats and one will defect to the Green Party.

One defecting MP will be accused of not having a “red wall” seat at all, but a boringly ordinary, no-longer-safe Conservative seat. “I’ve always made it very clear that I support the red wall,” he will say.

That’s not salt!
The Prime Minister will clarify that when he said the General Election would be held “later in the year”, he meant that it would be held at the very end of the year and possibly not before the final possible date of 28th January 2025.

“I’ve always made it very clear that the General Election will be held at the right time,” he will say.

The opposition Labour Party will drop all its policy pledges. “We’ve always made it very clear that we are running on a promise to save the country,” the Labour leader will say.

Filming of Dune 3 will begin in the arid desert that was once the Cotswolds in November.

The first of nine desalination plants will be opened by a water company on the Dorset coast near Lyme Regis on the Jurassic Coast.

In what is intended to be a witty gesture, media packs for the opening of the desalination plant will all include one small fossilised coprolite. It is later judged that this was a mistake.

Working through the night
It will emerge that the prime minister was third in the race to be first to congratulate the president after the US election. “I’ve always made it very clear that it’s not a race,” the prime minister will say.

At COP29 in Azerbaijan, delegates will work through the night to agree the wording of a Final Declaration calling for targets.

A British journalist will point out that the Final Declaration includes whole paragraphs cut and pasted from the COP28 Final Declaration. The COP29 president will describe this intervention as “not helpful”.

Endgame
With barely three weeks to go before the final date for the UK general election, a podium will be brought out one morning and placed in front of 10 Downing Street.

Journalists behind the barrier on the other side of Downing Street will spend the morning talking to their cameras about “the famous black door”. As the hours continue to pass, they will reminisce desperately about past announcements from “the famous podium”.

By mid-afternoon, they will be reminiscing about “the famous cat”, and wondering live on air how various functionaries feel about being filmed as they come and go.

By mid-evening, they will be talking about the darkening sky, famously dark at this time of night of course, but dark with no stars tonight and will the prime minister think this an omen?

And we’re cutting back to the studio — no! — I think there’s movement, the door, that famous door, is opening, as it does when people come in and out, and — yes!

And we’re seeing the prime minister approaching the famous podium, the prime minister who of course we all recognise, whom I should say, he’s coming up to the podium now, he’s about to speak, and --

The heavens open. Rain falls. Thunder crashes.

The whole nation washes itself clean.

I’d like to mention the late Denis Howell, who was appointed Minister for Drought in August 1976, during the driest Summer in the UK for 200 years, as a member of the then-Labour UK government.

Within days of Mr Howell’s appointment, the rain started and didn’t stop; the Minister for Drought became (officially) the Minister for Floods. Then, in the cold Winter of 1978/79, Mr Howell was appointed Minister for Snow. There was a lot of it. But it did stop.

Denis Howell was a principled politician with a humorous side. I don’t know much more about him than I’ve written here, but I do remember him, and I also remember reactions to him, and and I think it’s fair to say that overall, he was a positive presence at a difficult time in British politics.