Thanks to that McKeating, I’ve spent the last 24 hours slaughtering goats and throwing their entrails around the flat, as well as sneaking in to Highgate cemetery to dig up some knuckle bones, in a desperate attempt to live up to expectation and provide six accurate predictions for the coming year. So here we go, then:

1) The [tag]German EU preseidency[/tag] will achieve precisely nothing of any substance. Neither will the Portugese presidency after that.

2) The Socialists and [tag]Ségolène Royal[/tag] will win the [tag]French presidential election[/tag]. France’s attitude and policies will change not a jot – but right-wing bloggers in the US will suddenly find themselves experts in the policies and history of the Parti Socialiste, and make highly convincing cases (bolstered by links to the EU Referendum blog, which will unearth some “damning” photographs of some description) that France is now more evil and Communist than even the USSR under Stalin (because “at least the Soviets fought the Nazis – the French just ran away”), and that it is the world’s worst example of a “Dhimmi state” and threatens the very existence of everything we (they) hold dear when Royal is seen shaking hands with a man of Arabic descent on a visit to the Paris suburbs.

3) The accession of [tag]Romania[/tag] and [tag]Bulgaria[/tag] will have precisely no serious impact on the current functioning of the [tag]EU[/tag], either economically or institutionally

4) When [tag]Tony Blair[/tag] leaves office, all senior European politicians will hold a massive party to celebrate, doing more for further integration in one night than has been achieved in the last ten years after a succession of incredible breakthroughs caused by the sheer bubbly brilliance of the champagne laid on by France. But the next day they’ll all be too hungover to remember anything, and everything will carry on as normal.

5) The accession of Romania and Bulgaria will prompt umpteen scare stories about impoverished gypsies stealing our jobs/daughters/sheep/caravans in the right-wing press Europe-wide during slow news weeks

6) A minor EU directive concerning digital television will be interpreted by some idiotic minister/mandarin in Whitehall in such a way that they try to force us all to have microchips surgically implanted into our skulls to ensure that they can keep track of just how many hours of Price Drop TV we watch every day. Those who do not watch the requisite ten hours of television per week supposedly demanded by the [tag]European Commission[/tag] will be given ASBOs and denied all access to benefits, rubbish collection, the NHS, and their fellow human beings until such a time as they have “txted 2 w1n” – or rung up the lovely Abbi and Traci on Television X to ask them to run their elbows together while calling your (made-up) name and sticking their tongues out in the most unerotic way imaginable.