There are two things we like to do at the beginning of a new year. First we like to make a series of New Year’s resolutions that are almost impossible to keep. And secondly, we tried to predict what will happen in the following year. So every year starts off with this difficult-if-not-fruitless exercise!

Let’s start with this year’s predictions. And just to put that into some context, my predictions for 2022 were good but not great! I didn’t think China would invade Taiwan and I thought in time China would realise the errors of its wolf-warrior diplomacy and start to soften its attitude to the outside world. That proved to be right. I thought there would be inflationary pressures coupled with rising interest rates coming from the $14 trillion of extra global spending in response to the COVID-19 crisis. That prediction turned out to be right.