The great betrayal

After 2016, it might seem that there's no such thing as a safe political prediction, but I'd still be pretty surprised if Andrew Rawnsley has got it wrong when he forecasts that 2017 will be the year when our gilded new generation of self-styled anti-elitist politicians abandon the ("low grade")* people (AKA "morons")* who voted for change to the tender mercy of the same old status quo that's been making people like Trump richer and the rest of us poorer for the last forty years:

What are stock markets telling us when they respond to Mr Trump and Mrs May by sending share prices to record highs? They are telling us that they think that the British prime minister is a phoney and the incoming American president is a conman. They are wagering that President Trump will betray the poorer voters who helped put him in the White House. They are betting that Theresa May will not deliver for the less affluent Britons whose Brexit votes helped elevate her to Number 10. That’s what the cash is saying. The “forgotten men and women” of America will be no better remembered in the Trump cabinet of tycoons. Mrs May’s “just about managing” will find out she is all jam tomorrow, never today.

I'm less sure whether people will start to realise that they've been conned in the coming year, or whether the scammers can successfully carry on misdirecting their marks with yet more of the bluster, trolling and scapegoating that worked so well for them in 2016.

*Don't blame me for the language - "low grade" and "moron" © these two guys - I take no credit.