For many of us, we can’t see the back of 2020 fast enough. For many it has been a year of illness, personal loss and worry. Through in the economic and political instability, is it any wonder that already Christmas trees are going up a month early. We all want something positive to make us feel better. What’s not to like about an early Christmas?
What’s more, surely 2021 can be better? Well the omens are good if our luck holds out. Firstly, the dreaded second wave of Covid 19 has not brought the level of destruction that many feared. Level 5 is as deep as it gets. We’re approaching the back half of lockdown and the economy is functioning to an extent. Deaths and hospitalisation are a fraction of what was the norm at Easter, but we’re only as good as our last day. There are reasons to be optimistic if we hold our heads.
Covid 19 also was the final straw in the US to send Donald Trump back to the golf course ushering in a new era. However, Biden did not perform as well as expected, he scraped home. It wasn’t the predicted landslide. But there wasn’t civil unrest either. Without Covid, Trump may well have clung on to office for another term.
But beyond the tense excitment of a Biden victory, his party did not fare as well in the senate or congress elections. Far right politics is still a potent force driving populism among independent candidates at home and abroad. Biden will have to compromise if he is to make progress. That may not be a bad thing as it can offer to Republicans other than Trump a platform to deliver and outflank the political tumour that is the Donald.
A number of weeks ago, Taoiseach Michéal Martin accepted an invite to the White House for St Patricks Day. You can put your money on the event being a celebration like no other. Biden is rightly proud of his Irish roots. He quotes Séamus Heaney’s poems. We Irish are lucky to have such regard in the US. We can thank the late John Hume for that. He had the vision to build on relations with the EU and USA during bleak times in the 1980’s. Hume’s vision has paid a dividend to the island he loved so well.
An invite for a state visit to Biden cannot be too far away. When he arrives you can bet your bottom dollar that he will be brought to his ancestral home at Carlingford in Co Louth. There will be no more potent symbol than Biden gazing across its deep lough at Co Down a mile away. During the troubles the Royal Navy had a gunboat on permanent patrol around the lough which the UK claims right up to the high water mark on the southern shore to this day. In another life I spent 2 years working for a cross border body in the area.
While Trump encouraged Johnson’s Brexit delusions, the prospect of President Biden must be striking fear into the hearts of Brexiteers. Weeks away from concluding a torturous trade deal with the EU, Farage and his mates must be rueing the squandered opportunities to cut a deal in the last 4 years. There is a spring in the EU step that the final deal with Britain will see little economic damage to Ireland and our borders are secured.
Covid 19 saw a lot of money being spent in houses but also savings increase. If 2021 is the turning of the corner we may well see an improvement in the economy as confidence encourages people to spend more. There are strong grounds for optimism, in the economy, within families, the wider society and for our own personal health. all we have to do is hope.
As Noddy Holder says; “look to the future, it’s only just begun”.
