2030 – What Does The Future Hold?

2030 – What Does The Future Hold?

Last week I did a talk entitled '2030' – a topical title these days given the cloudy outlook and there are already some decent books such as Jim Stavridis' '2034' that look out that far. Yet, the fallacy of forecasting is to try to imagine discrete events in the future – a better starting point in looking ahead eight years is to go back eight. If we travel back to 2014, the key events were Russia invading Crimea, Britain's existential political struggle (Scottish independence), an epidemic (Ebola in Africa), pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, an economic crisis in Europe, the election of Modi in India and Iranian nuclear talks. Many of these phenomena are still with us (Modi, Iran), others 'we' failed to take seriously as portending more serious developments (Russia, Brexit, Epidemic, HK). In particular, the last four have stress tested globalization and found it wanting each time. If, based on the comparison of 2014 to today, we extrapolate a trend in the behaviour of nations then we might hazard that by 2030 Russia and China will form a lonely anti-Western alliance, Emmanuel Macron will be President of the EU, Hungary will be been forced out of the EU