GOODBYE 2020 and good riddance. We won’t miss you one bit. But will 2021 be any better? What can we expect?

Politics-wise, there will be a clutch of important elections in the coming year. There are federal elections in post-Merkel Germany in September that will determine the future of Europe’s largest economy. Add in the Dutch general election in March plus a Portuguese presidential election and a legislative contest in the Czech Republic, and the EU will be taking stock after Brexit.

Add in elections in Norway and Iceland, on the EU periphery, and we can say Europe is moving on economically and politically. But where to?

The EU economy is driven by Germany and the German economic motor is spluttering. Germany is an export-driven economy that suddenly finds itself selling obsolete diesel cars and machine tools that the Chinese can now make for themselves. In 2021, the old German economic model has to change, or the EU will be crushed between a resurgent neoliberal America and a statist China set on becoming the world’s biggest economy.

READ MORE: Stephen Paton: Here are five things we can look forward to in 2021

To date, Germany has produced no solution to this economic conundrum. The leading Christian Democrats have failed to find a convincing replacement for leader Merkel, the Socialists are in terminal meltdown, the Greens are at 20% in the polls, and the semi-fascist and racist AfD is still around to cause trouble. The rush by the SNP to rejoin the EU comes just as the latter is entering a deep political and economic ennui, led by an increasingly unstable Germany.

Across the Atlantic, 2021 will see Joe Biden shuffle into the White House on the arm of vice-president Kamala Harris, and a disgruntled Trump do anything but retire gracefully. The old Republican Party is as dead as Marley’s door knocker, replaced by Trump’s army of grassroots populists determined to win back Congress at the mid-term elections. America is a divided republic and nothing in 2021 suggests this division will heal.

Bidden is committed to reviving US global economic and political hegemony under the unlikely guise of leading the charge against climate change. For this, read a determination for US high tech to dominate the switch to a hydrogen economy. Expect 2021 to be dominated by rose-tinted predictions about how hydrogen gas will be the cure-all for everything. Alas, hiding beneath the headlines is a plot by Big Energy to save its investments in natural gas, aka methane, a worse greenhouse problem than CO2.

Big Energy wants to crack methane into hydrogen and pump it into our homes along the same pipes as the methane now flows. But making hydrogen this way gives off CO2 in vast quantities. We are assured it can be safely stored underground, as if by magic – however, this has never been done at scale. Nor is the prospect of storing CO2 in perpetuity any more reassuring than storing waste radioactive sludge. But expect Biden to try to sell this fantasy to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, come November.

Meanwhile, the good news is that 2021 should eventually see off Covid-19 as the world gets vaccinated. However, expect some pandemic experiences to remain with us next year and thereafter. In particular, the transition to home working will not abate. Working at home reduces property overheads for companies and actually intensifies labour discipline and productivity as it allows bosses to monitor staff in minute detail.

The latest US studies predict that a doubling of those working permanently from home is expected during 2021, even as the pandemic subsides. But don’t expect your boss to up your salary to pay for your home heating bill.

What about the stock market in 2021? Fancy a punt? Dividend-wise, 2020 was a bad year. Some 53 current or former members of the FTSE 100 index either cut or cancelled more than £37 billion of dividend payments, thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak. In terms of value, the FTSE 100 index is down around 15% on the year. Mind you, stocks are still overvalued thanks to the Bank of England pumping in an extra £150bn of quantitative easing recently, ie printing money. But what of 2021?

CITY analysts are predicting a sharp rise in the FTSE through 2021, thanks to the vaccine and the Brexit deal. However, the betting suggests the FTSE will only get back to where it was at the start of 2020. Much depends on the small print of the new Brexit deal.

After four years of negotiation, the EU and UK have produced an agreement with worse trade terms than they both had at the start. Services, which are excluded from the deal, will be hardest hit. Expect Chancellor Sunak to press ahead with his freeport scheme (come the March Budget) to try to grab European jobs using deregulation. That could produce the first crisis with the EU over the new trade pact.

Above all, 2021 will see the Holyrood election. It is difficult to conceive the SNP lead in the polls being reduced very much in the next four months even if Boris gets a temporary electoral fillip thanks to the Brexit deal.

The real issue is what the SNP leadership does after May when Boris stonewalls a second independence referendum. This crisis will coincide with rising unemployment after the Chancellor’s various furlough schemes come to an end.

This will undoubtedly lead to further friction between the SNP leadership and the mass indy movement, which is impatient for action. Especially so as a new national membership organisation for indy activists – on the lines of the Catalan ANC – is being launched in early 2021. Behind this move are leading activists from All Under One Banner and the Scottish Independence Foundation, as well as SNP MP Angus Brendan MacNeil.

READ MORE: Andrew Tickell: How Scots have learned to love independence in 2020

These tensions upset some in the movement, who urge unity at all costs. Yet all we are seeing is the inevitable political differentiation and debates over strategy that arise when an independence movement becomes a true mass force in a nation.

In this respect, the SNP leadership has been unwise to try to stifle debate at its conferences. Expect the debate over a prospective Plan B for indy to heat up rather than diminish, over 2021. A crunch could come at the 2021 SNP annual conference if Boris is still stonewalling (which he will).

Unless … the SNP leadership changes the rules of the game and uses the May election as a mandate to negotiate independence. That would require a majority vote of the electorate, of course, but that is not inconceivable. And what better time than May, as the full negative implications of the Brexit deal are revealed and the economy locks into mass unemployment. Popular discontent in Scotland will be at its peak. What better time to seek popular endorsement for Scottish self-determination?

Which suggests 2021 could be a year for the history books. You might say the same for 2020, but the last 12 months will be remembered for the pandemic, for the interminable lockdown, and the loss of human contact. Next year could be remembered for the start of a brighter future in Scotland. Let’s make it happen. And a good New Year to you all.