About a century and a half ago, Leopold von Ranke wrote: “Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realise where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favoured by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward . . . Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.”

And in 2007, Labour MPs will vote for Gordon Brown as their party leader and Britain’s next prime minister.

Libby Purves

There will be a panic about getting Wembley finished for the Diana concert, and an embarrassing problem with the lavatories. Media will lash themselves into a frenzy declaring that Prince William will announce his engagement from the concert stage. When he fails to do so, the predictors will not apologise.

J. K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book will get real. Under Professor Snape, Hogwarts will be converted into an academy with funding from Voldemort’s corporate arm, Death Eaters International. Dark Arts will be compulsory, and refuseniks transferred to a vocational or house-elf stream and forced to work naked in the kitchens.

Bronwen Maddox

President Bush will send a “surge” of troops into Iraq, which will bring Baghdad a bit more under control but make a “graceful exit” even harder; the Iraqi Government will miss every target he sets. Iran will ignore the UN resolution telling it to stop its nuclear programme, and press ahead, but with a weather eye on avoiding military action.

Europe will be preoccupied with itself, paralysed until the French elections in late spring, and then wrangling over a new constitution, the lack of progress concealed by talk about climate change. Better news will come from Asia, where China and India continue to offer different models of extraordinary development, and Shinzo Abe, the newish Japanese Prime Minister, may manage to repair relations with China despite a year full of over-resonant wartime anniversaries.

Martin Samuel

For me this is a very exciting year as it brings the launch of my new satellite channel, aimed squarely at the tastes of the modern British public.

We will be on air 24/7, with a daily diet of highly original programmes about the dangers of fat people, plus untalented minor celebrities and journalists who will do anything to remain on television, and a daily argument between two slow-witted ASBO recipients over whose sperm is contained within a pinch-faced, lank-haired skank as refereed by a posturing middle-class white boy. At night we will show the latest attempt by Anthea Turner to revive her career by telling us how to cook Christmas dinner for somebody else’s husband.

You may scoff, but I expect Wall To Wall T**ts, once off the ground, to be the broadcasting success of 2007.