Let’s hope for better as Scotland heads into 2023

Looking back at the turbulent events of 2022, we might be tempted to believe that things surely can’t get any worse.

But hasn’t that sentiment been consistently disproven over the last five years?

UK politics continues to be characterised by dysfunction and instability.

Surely 2022 should have been a year full of hope and a return to something resembling normality?

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It was the first year since 2020 where Covid truly seemed to be in the rear view mirror.

I was filming a television programme recently and we did a review of the year’s news. It was heartening to see the pandemic relegated to an add-on topic, rather than the sole focus, as it had been for so long.

Of course, while we weren’t consumed by that particular crisis, there were others to fill the time.

Rising energy and food costs, crippling inflation and widespread industrial action necessitated by the poverty wages inflicted on workers gave us plenty to talk about.

It’s like a bad joke. A global pandemic followed by a set of circumstances that has left ordinary people scared to put the heating on and priced-out of everyday essentials.

The crises that have caused misery for millions will follow us into the new year.

And yet there is still a sense that those at the top don’t fully understand how grave the situation is for so many people.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bats away questions about the crisis with self-congratulatory statements about the emergency financial support his government has introduced for those on the lowest incomes.

He doesn’t mention the fact that his party is directly responsible for leaving the poorest in society so vulnerable to economic turbulence.

After more than a decade of Tory austerity, low-income families have no room left to manoeuvre. The energy and cost of living payments are nothing more than small lump sums, designed to temporarily stave off total destitution.

They certainly aren’t something a Conservative Prime Minister should expect plaudits for.

If I snuck into your house in the middle of the night and emptied your cupboards and fridge of all food, you wouldn’t feel grateful if I offered you a KitKat.

The living and working conditions of millions of people across the UK have become so perilous that a reckoning is surely imminent.

We have no elections due in 2023, although given the chaos of the Conservative Party in recent years, it would be foolish to rule one out entirely.

But workers are already taking action in other ways to show the government that they’ve had enough.

It goes without saying that we should support the strikers.

Continued industrial action will cause huge disruption in the new year and while on an individual level, that might be frustrating for people who use these services, temporary inconvenience is a small price to pay for ordinary people to get the pay they deserve.

The right-wing media take a different view.

These agents of spin pit low-income workers against each other to distract from government failings.

They tell the paramedic to blame the immigrant; the refuse worker to blame the benefit claimant, and the office worker to blame the railway strikers.

It’s no surprise that union boss Mick Lynch has become their preferred bogeyman.

By focusing on one man, they can cleverly disguise the impact of the effective working-class movement that he is a part of.

Given the disaster trajectory of the last five years, we should probably be bracing ourselves for plagues of locusts in 2023.

Even if we are spared such a fate, I think we all know that at a minimum, the first half of the year is set to be grim.

BUT for the first time in recent memory, there is a chance that the pain might lead to something better than before.

The interests of ordinary people have been overlooked for far too long now. There has to be a tipping point where we agree that, finally, enough is enough.

We live in a country where some workers rely on food banks to feed their families.

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I volunteer at my local foodbank – I’ve met them, they are real.

I’ve also met the carers of children with disabilities who have been referred to the foodbank because of benefit delays or cuts.

And I’ve seen the devastating impact that energy price rises have had, where the only thing protecting the most vulnerable from the cold is the warm clothes that have been donated – not by government – but by generous souls who are probably struggling themselves with the cost of living.

While the rich get richer, the poor are supposed to feel grateful for one-off grants and scraps and the charity of others.

In 2023, that injustice is one that we can’t afford to let continue.