Our columnists' predictions for 2013 | The panel

We asked writers what to watch for in the year ahead. From the UK economy to the Middle East, here are their thoughts

Simon Jenkins: Prepare for tedium and lurches

Journalists are terrible forecasters. They see disaster everywhere, and greet it with hyperbole. In 2013 I pledge to avoid it. Therefore, I predict that nothing of interest will happen next year, unless you are in the royal baby business, in which case you are in clover.
2013 will a year of tedium and lurches. The economy will lurch through a barely noticeable recovery. The Afghan war will lurch towards a bloody and embarrassing exit. The coalition will lurch on, with more and more bad blood, but will not collapse because neither of its parties wants to stare over the cliff edge of an early poll. They will cling desperately to the hope that at least times could not get worse – of all hopes the most futile.
The prime minister will lurch through one U-turn after another, his lack of ideological lodestar ever more infuriating to his supporters. In particular his vacillation on such hardy perennials as Europe, the countryside and gay marriage will drive ever more Tory voters into the arms of Ukip. That party should edge towards the critical 18-20% that will do for the Tories what the Social Democrats did for Labour in the early 1980s, which was make them inelectable. What that will achieve for the Eurosceptic cause is a mystery.
Meanwhile Cameron will become ever angrier and more ragged and Ed Miliband will continue to build a strangely effective public posture. In 2013 all this will happen. Or possibly not.

Polly Toynbee: The coalition will get a surprise

Economic anxiety tops the bill at the close of 2012, but by late 2013 the NHS will not be far behind. All is quiet after the chaotic passage of the NHS bill, but the new system goes live in April with many commissioning groups needing emergency help from outside consultants. Hospital tariff cuts of 4% will cause bankruptcies, rushed A & E closures and rising waiting lists by next winter, worse in 2014: the lid can't be held down much longer.
Watch support ebb when the coalition's benefit cuts hit with full force from April, just as the rich get a tax cut. Expect shocking stories of families losing children's disability living allowance. Picture disabled people chaining themselves to mobility scooters about to be repossessed.
By autumn when bailiffs knock up penniless families to collect council tax bills they never had to pay before, expect echoes of the poll tax. Deep-dyed Tory voters may cheer on any amount of abuse of benefit recipients, but if Labour gives voice to the outrage this deserves, public opinion shift will significantly in a "but I didn't mean people like them" moment. 2013 is the year the coalition discovers plenty of British people are profoundly wedded to the welfare state – and kinder-hearted than they thought.

Hannah Betts: The year of being single

Politicians forever bleating about "hard-working middle-class families" are set to look ever more antediluvian in 2013. December's 2011 census results revealed that, for the first time, married couple households are in a minority (at 47%, down from 50.9% in 2001), while the number of single adults has risen by 3 million. More Britons are unwedded than wedded, with the traditional family unit increasingly feeling like an anachronism, not least in the nation's cities. Another 2 million single households are anticipated by 2020.

In 2013 there will not only be an expanding demographic of singles proper, but fewer people will be marrying, and those who do get hitched will do it later, with half such unions ending in divorce. Society is at a tipping point where being single – or some variation on the theme, for at least a proportion of one's adult life – is becoming the norm, being married the aberration.

Meanwhile, that great poster girl for millennial singles, Ms Carrie Bradshaw, will be returning in teen guise in The Carrie Diaries, a SATC prequel airing in the States in mid-January. And what an insipid affair it looks to be for those of us who have relished the red-in-tooth-and-claw joys of the late, great Gossip Girl. Expect romantic idealism of a sort to make the bubble perms appear modish.

Seumas Milne: Keep watching the Middle East

The crisis in the eurozone will erupt again, despite the autumn's market stabilisation, because the underlying causes are unresolved and austerity is making them worse. Political polarisation will increase across the continent, at the ballot box and on the streets. Meanwhile, whatever happens to Hugo Chávez, most of Latin America and China will carry on growing and slashing poverty – either because they've turned their back on a failed neoliberal model or ignored its key prescriptions in the first place.
The greatest danger – and hope of change – will be in the Middle East. Short of a diplomatic breakthrough, the threat of a US or Israeli attack on Iran is likely to be ratcheted up next summer. And unless negotiation can halt Syria's civil war, the sectarian bloodletting will spread – regardless of Assad's fate.

Simon JenkinsPolly ToynbeeHannah BettsSeumas Milne
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