‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’, the message of New York’s Statue of Liberty, seems somehow less pertinent in Trumpian America as it’s mass deportations begin.

This new year, 2025, heralds a chaotic World. In Ukraine, invading forces grind slowly forward over the bodies of their comrades: the Russian underclass, North Korea’s supposed elite forces and anyone else prepared to sell their lives cheaply. Trump postures, Putin ignores.At the time of writing, there is a pause in the mutual destruction of Israelis and Palestinians, but no sign of peaceful intent. Meanwhile, the space available to the latter appears to shrink by the day, potentially, it now appears, to zero.

Some years ago, I read an article, I think in the New York Times, that argued that a second state solution, the mantra of western nations, had always been a non-starter. Why, it asked, would Israel agree to the creation of a State that would be occupied by those who continued to wish it harm, and hence be a greater threat than at present?

It was cogent and convincing, and (I was surprised to discover) written by the then ruler of Libya, Colonel Muammer Gaddafi, later summarily shot, trying to escape the country. Africa too. Rwanda, its name synonymous with modern genocide and still awaiting its first tranche of the UK’s refugees, appears to be stirring the pot of revolution in its geographically much larger neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Here, in the verdant and peaceful Forest of Dean, we are shielded from all of this, and the climate change disasters that have been devastating elsewhere are yet to touch us in any serious fashion. Without minimising the longer-term dangers to our existence, my aging bones cannot help but welcome the milder winters, while missing both my youth and the show-frosted beauty of the silent, wintry forest of the past.In the UK, the loud, vitriolic, desperate clamour against the new regime from the rump Conservative Party, the right-wing press and Elon Musk, seems to have calmed. It failed to induce panic, or even to dent the resolve of the Labour Government, which moves relentlessly forward with what is increasingly looking like a detailed plan.Get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.

Why was it ever considered rational to hand out Winter payments to rich and poor alike? I don’t need it, and I am a long way from being rich. Recover the two per cent National Insurance cut to employees, a cut that public services could ill afford, but shift it to their employers, as the masses, the workers, have suffered enough under recent governments.

Curiously, the government plan, of cutting regulations and encouraging growth, sounds exactly like their predecessors, so why did it not work for them? According to the dogma of feted economists, it should have worked, and the country ought already to be more prosperous.Could the mistake have been to read the texts but not to understand them, as the Right seem also to do on race and gender?

How can you expand an economy while impoverishing those whose spending makes it tick? How can you increase consumer confidence while diminishing the ability to stay healthy and productive? It was madness, and the product of lesser intellects.It is tempting to write that no one can be sure that the current government’s plans will succeed, but that is not true. Rather, all of the indicators are that investors are impressed, and their judgment is significant. Here’s to a happy and more prosperous new year!