THE year 2022 will be remembered in a wheen of different ways – few of them positive.

It was the year President Putin upended the world order by invading Ukraine. The year 40,000 Ukrainians lost their lives but their fellow countrymen and women gained the respect (and military support) of an awestruck western world which had expected their resistance to be crushed within days.

It was the year Liz Truss trashed the British economy, doubled mortgage payments for some, and lost the next election for the Conservatives (halfway to defeat anyway).

It was the hottest, driest year on record in the UK – with the climate crisis rearing its head just as oil and gas shortages forced this panicking government back to the madness of more fossil fuel extraction.

READ MORE: 2022 to be warmest year on record for the UK, Met Office says

It was a year marked by the deaths of Robbie Coltrane, Meat Loaf, Terry Hall of the Specials and the Queen – a long anticipated moment marked by few outbursts of worshipfulness – or public snubs – north of the border.

But maybe 2022 was also the year impunity ended – when the biggest, dangerously self-obsessed narcissists finally suffered the consequences of throwing their collective weight around the world stage.

Consider, 2022 saw the back of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the near total collapse of Vladimir Putin’s military authority.

When the Russian president invaded Ukraine on February 24th he intended to annexe new territory, wipe out the very idea of Ukrainian identity and turn what remained into a failed state. But after months of dogged resistance, Ukrainian statehood and identity are stronger than ever, with blue and yellow flags a familiar sight across the towns and villages of Scotland, solidarity high and fundraising efforts continuing apace. Indeed, as The Economist’s Russia editor Arkady Ostrovsky has observed, everything Putin planned for Ukraine now afflicts his own country.

“Putin’s war has turned Russia into a failed state, with uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict.”

Worse, for the self-styled he-man, happy to be photographed stripped to the waist on a fishing expedition, braving the cold waters of a mountain lake – Putin now looks personally weak and feart.

He’s been conspicuous by his total absence from ever-retreating Ukrainian frontlines, opting to reward soldiers from the comfort and safety of a Kremlin palace, while rival Volodymyr Zelensky handed out medals last week on the front line at Bakhmut, where fierce fighting has been raging for months.

Outdone by a comedian, who’s managed to put Ukraine on the world map. That’s gotta hurt.

Now of course, Putin has still managed to turn the economic screw a notch tighter with his recent ban on oil sales to any state applying the G7 price cap.

But there’s general agreement Putin’s days in charge are numbered – and even if his successor might be just as aggressive, that’s a result no-one anticipated in early March.

The same’s true of his rival/partner in crime, Donald Trump.

Even after his defeat in 2020 Trump remained a snarling, powerful, defiant and divisive presence in American politics. He was expected to run for the Presidency in 2024 and win all over again, shrugging off every legal challenge along the way.

That’s not going to happen.

The Congressional January 6 committee has produced a damning official record (largely told by his own aides) of his attempt to steal the presidency in 2020. A special prosecutor is on his case. And tomorrow after disastrous midterm elections for his party and a broken bid to return to power, his tax returns will finally be made public. That’s hugely significant because Trump broke with decades of precedent by refusing to release them in 2016, and has fought to keep them under wraps ever since.

IT’S a victory for the doggedness of democratic process in America and in particular the House of Representatives’ ways and means committee which won the right to publish after a lengthy court battle ended with the US supreme court ruling in their favour.

This comes on the back of two opinion polls putting the Florida governor Ron DeSantis ahead of Donald Trump for the Republican nomination by a whopping 23 points and a CNN poll which found 62% of Republicans want their party to nominate someone else in 2024.

The published tax returns should be the tin-lid on Trump’s political career, showing how the real estate and reality star made bad financial decisions, suffered serious losses and engaged in routine tax avoidance.

And that’s a result.

At the start of 2022, everyone thought Trump was untouchable.

But even though Joe Biden’s ratings were terrible, the Democrats’ much-predicted collapse hasn’t happened.

Sure – the received wisdom is that DeSantis is just Trump with brains but without the drama.

Sure – deSantis is just as right wing and scary in his own way.

But it’s easy to overlook the fact Donald Trump is finally reaping the whirlwind he has sown.

There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic – of course.

But they get counted more often, more publicly and with greater energy than the modest success for democratic process that’s in danger of passing us by.

Which brings us of course, to Boris Johnson – another Teflon figure whose artful ability to bounce back from humiliation and defeat has been elevated to near mythological proportions. And not just by himself.

In the end though, Boris got his jotters.

Despite constant comeback rumours, he hasn’t but does seem to have boosted the fortunes of that other shameless charlatan Nigel Farage, whose Reform Party might destroy the slim majorities of 30 Tory MPs including Iain Duncan Smith, if he returns to the helm.

What a parcel of rogues.

Of course, it’s true that Johnson’s demise only succeeded in casting this country from the frying pan into the fire.

Unbelievably, Liz Truss managed to be worse than the worst ever Prime Minister. Mind you, after raising two fingers at a departing EU for several years, at least Liz freshened the international news agenda with her highly publicised battle for survival with the Daily Star’s lettuce.

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak’s ‘safe pair of hands’ have proved to be shaky in the extreme with supply problems, shortages, strikes and system breakdown everywhere.

This is what Britain has come to.

READ MORE: Let’s hope for better as Scotland heads into 2023

There’s no silver lining in the current cost-of-everything crisis, but at least there is long overdue realisation in Scotland that our vast energy resources should be protecting citizens from fuel poverty and from the cold, damp houses we’ve tolerated far, far too long.

I’d guess that’s one big reason that support for independence is steadily rising.

Attitudes are changing across the world. Dictators and powerful liars are set to falter and fall. Democracy matters.

And Scotland’s stubborn, steadfast campaign for self-determination fits these new times.

There’s a message of hope in there for Yessers in 2023.