Libby Purves

A cultural prediction: recession will bring revulsion at the sour aggressive tone of the affluent years, as audiences demand gentleness and warmth. Affable comedy will outsell sneers; style shows yield to countryside and tradition. Cool, cursing chefs will be replaced by cuddles and dumplings. Musicals with hearts of gold will thrive and Alan Titchmarsh stalk the land, smiling. Feelgood will be box-office; misery memoirs remaindered.

Matthew Parris

There will be a general election that the Tories will win with an overall majority of 2x+7 where x = the month (expressed numerically) in which it is held: thus in May the Tory majority is 17, in October, 27.

David Wighton

Royal Bank of Scotland will announce thousands of job losses and be taken into full public ownership. Mounting bad loans will force the Government to put more money into the bank, which is 58 per cent state owned, threatening further heavy losses for investors.

Janice Turner

As unemployment rises, many will stop seeing work as a source of life's meaning and regard it as something that - if they are lucky enough - pays the mortgage. People will look beyond the office for fulfilment and start joining things: community groups, bowling clubs, football teams, the WI, choirs, the Scouts and Guides, even churches. Huddled close we might keep each other cheerful through the storm.

Gary Duncan

It will be a year of living dangerously for the British economy, which will suffer a brutal contraction of 2 per cent or more. Interest rates will be cut to under 1 per cent, but this will prove largely ineffective and billions of pounds more of taxpayers' money will be injected into the banks.

Daniel Finkelstein

Philip Tetlock in his huge study of political forecasts showed that experts do no better using their expertise than they would by tossing a coin. But by the far the best way to make such guesses is to predict that past behaviour will repeat itself. Last year Gordon Brown put Peter Mandelson back in government. He will try the same with David Blunkett.

Richard Beeston

In the first half of 2009 Iran will develop enough fissile material to build its first nuclear bomb. In the second half it will be able to build an atomic weapon. But President Ahmadinejad, the most vocal supporter of a nuclear Iran, will no longer be in office. He will lose elections in the summer because of his poor handling of the economy.

Peter Riddell

Labour will become unpopular again as recesssion deepens. So no early general election. Gordon Brown and David Cameron will both undertake extensive reshuffles that will be overshadowed when President Obama visits Europe, including London, in April.

Jeremy Page

A general election in India, due by May, will produce another fragile coalition Government and a terrorist attack on an Indian city will trigger another stand-off with Pakistan. The latter will lurch from one crisis to the next as it tries to meet international demands to crack down on militants without provoking a backlash. Sri Lanka will declare victory over the Tamil Tigers, officially ending a 25-year civil war.

Oliver Kamm

The global recession will be deep, but the first steps to recovery in the financial system will be in place: quantitative easing, huge fiscal stimulus and writedowns of distressed assets. Stock markets will respond, with the Dow Jones reaching 10,500 by the year end.

Philip Webster

Michael Martin will announce early in the new year that he is in his last term as Speaker. He will go in the autumn to give MPs time to choose his successor, winning praise on all sides for his statesmanlike move. Sir George Young or Sir Alan Haselhurst will succeed him.

Bronwen Maddox

It will be a good year for the EU despite the drama of an Irish referendum and the uncertainties of the Czech presidency for the first half of the year. Even if Ireland votes “no”, the EU will chug along. The interest of countries in joining - Iceland, after its financial implosion, and the Balkan states - will be evidence of its continued attraction. The recession and worries about dependence on Russia will make countries focus on reforms of energy, farming and competitiveness.

Joe Joseph

Given how predictions are shaped by past events, recent events lead you to predict that something dramatic will happen in 2009 that was entirely unpredictable - just like the banking collapse, Bernard Madoff, and John Sergeant's paso doble were in 2008. So just as John Cage said: “I'm saying nothing and I'm saying it,” I am confidently predicting nothing and I'm predicting it.

Alice Thomson

Urged on by Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister calls a spring election. The result is a hung Parliament with the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. Nick Clegg does a deal with the Tories and becomes Home Secretary in David Cameron's Government. Lord Mandelson consoles himself by buying a cheap Notting Hill property, repossessed from a dismissed merchant banker.

Richard Morrison

You don't have to be Mystic Meg to guess that the arts will be in big trouble in 2009. As audiences count the cost of going out, the Government slashes subsidy and big-name sponsors go bust, there will be a severe curtailing of cultural life. But that needn't be all bad news: high subsidy has produced a lot of inconsequential, faddish, politically correct twaddle. But will the right things be cut?

David Aaronovitch

Days off through illnesses will increase, as will crime and church attendance. I may forget to vote in the European elections. Martin O'Neill will become manager of Manchester United. My new book, Voodoo Histories, published in May, will be a bestseller, due to relentless and almost unscrupulous promotion.

Giles Coren

Starburst will turn back into Opal Fruits. Snickers will turn back into Marathon bars. Non-homogenised milk will once again be sold in nice glass bottles with different coloured lids to tell you how creamy the contents are. Fizzy drinks can ring-pulls will revert to the detachable type so you can ping them across the classroom. Spud-U-Like outlets will take over the high streets. All the TV channels apart from BBC One and BBC Two will be cancelled. The internet will close. Teenagers will stop carrying knives. O-level Latin will be made compulsory for entry into any university. There will be three domestic postal deliveries a day. Britain will start manufacturing cars again. Nobody will ever swear. I will get married.

Ben Macintyre

Next year culture, both high, and very low. will flourish. More people will read more books than ever (a paperback still provides recyclable entertainment at about 50p an hour) but more people will watch cheap, bad television. John Sergeant will host a dance masterclass. Simon Armitage will become Poet Laureate. Margaret Atwood will win the Man Booker Prize, again. Dan Brown will finally squeeze out an execrable sequel to The Da Vinci Code, selling billions. Someone you have never heard of will win the Turner Prize.

Melanie Reid

Expect a decline in tolerance. As ordinary workers struggle, resentment towards those who don't bother will grow. The billions spent on those who live off the State, or abuse their children, or are maintained as methadone addicts, will incense more than Daily Mail voters. There will be new political rhetoric on becoming drug free.

Philip Collins

There will be no general election in 2009. The Chancellor thinks that the economy will be emerging from its trough by the autumn. If this coincides with Labour being ahead in the polls after the conference season, an election will follow. But neither of these things will happen.

Magnus Linklater

This is the year when the lights begin to flicker, and, just possibly, go out. With no real plans for the next generation of nuclear power stations, wind farms stalled and inadequate, and other alternative energy sources a distant dream, oil and gas are running short and there is nowhere else to go. A big year for candles.

Michael Gove

Gordon Brown will replace Dannii Minogue as an X Factor judge. Cheryl Cole will be appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary for Public Health and Minister for the North East. Radio 4 will drop Melvyn Bragg from In Our Time and replace him with Dizzee Rascal. History will be dropped from primary schools to make way for personal development classes. Peter Mandelson and James Purnell will step in to rescue London Fashion Week by modelling free. (One of these has already been ordered by the Government...)

Anatole Kaletsky

The US economy suffers six months of sharp contraction, followed by a strong recovery. Britain's recovery starts in the autumn, six months after interest rates are cut to 1 per cent and the Government guarantees mortgages and commercial loans. The euro falls back to 75p, as Europe suffers a longer recession than the US or Britain. Greece is the first euro country to call in the IMF. Capitalism is not replaced by socialism and the sky does not fall in on the Western world.

Camilla Cavendish

Boris Johnson will cancel the 2012 Olympics, taking a leaf out of Denver's book. Denver was to host the Winter Olympics in 1970 but voters refused to let their taxes be spent and the Games went to Innsbruck. Put it to the vote, Boris!

Rachel Sylvester

Election fever will intensify, fuelled by the inauguration of Barack Obama. The Prime Minister will align himself as closely as possible with the new President but he will resist the calls to hold a snap poll.

Gerard Baker

2009 will be the worst calendar year for the US economy since the Second World War. The decline in economic activity will far outpace the previous worst in 1982. But this will not be another Great Depression. By the end of the year the Federal Reserve's printing money and a huge fiscal stimulus from the new Obama Administration will set the stage for recovery in 2010.

Jan Raath

Robert Mugabe's fawning birthday celebrations on February 21 will be his last in power. It's not a safe bet, but no tyrant has ever learnt that they all fall, when they least expect it, to intangible things such as cholera epidemics.

Alice Miles

Speculation about a snap election will hover over most of the year. There won't be one. The Gordon Brown revival will fade. By the end of the year a barely disguised leadership contest will be under way in the Labour Party, foreshadowing a big defeat in 2010. Everyone will say Mr Brown should have called an election in 2007.

William Rees-Mogg

The big question is when, and whether, global recovery will begin. The recession started in the US and it seems probable that the recovery will also start there. President-elect Obama is planning a New Deal, at a possible cost of $850 billon. The year will show whether it can fly.

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