Need some predictions for 2016? Here's a breakdown, from Trump and Corbyn to Sebastian Coe and the Queen

In April, the Daily Mail demands that Corbyn be charged with high treason for failing to volunteer to have both his kidneys removed and kept on ice on the off chance that the Queen might one day suffer renal failure

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the crowd during a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Reuters)

January: After breaking convention by looking beyond his parliamentary colleagues in his first reshuffle, Jeremy Corbyn is defended on the Today programme by Hilary Benn’s replacement. “Jeremy has made it absolutely clear that this is not a retrograde step,” Derek Hatton, the new shadow Foreign Secretary, tells John Humphrys. “As Dave Nellist said to the late Eric Heffer when the Shadow Cabinet met yesterday, we’ll take no lectures from Tory scum about a return to the divisive politics of the early 1980s.”

February: Donald Trump suspects voter fraud following his second-place finish, behind Ted Cruz, in the Iowa caucuses.

“I literally saw thousands of men with beards in Osama bin Laden T-shirts putting AK47s to voters’ heads,” he claims. “Look, we need to intern all Muslims in Alaskan holding camps immediately.” After American media declares for the 47th time that Trump has gone too far, and that his presidential ambitions are over, he surges to an easy win in the New Hampshire primary a week later.

March: “Mr Speaker, we on this side of the House learn from our mistakes,” George Osborne begins his Budget statement, “and after last year’s error over tax credits I have learnt from mine. This Government is far from oblivious to the struggles of the poorly paid, and I hereby announce that £300m is to be set aside for the construction of debtors’ prisons.”

In his Budget debate speech, John McDonnell echoes Osborne. “I too learn from my mistakes,” he says, insouciantly lobbing a copy of The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writings, 1905-52 towards the Government front bench.

April: Right-wing newspapers defy expectations by marking the Queen’s 90th birthday with surprising restraint. The Daily Telegraph leads the way by restricting itself to a 2,560 page, leather-bound souvenir pull-out, as delivered to subscribers in a Union Jack-bedecked wheelbarrow, while the Daily Mail demands that Corbyn be charged with high treason for failing to volunteer to have both his kidneys removed and kept on ice on the off chance that Her Majesty might one day suffer renal failure.

May: After Labour performs unexpectedly well in the council elections to cement Corbyn’s position, Simon Danczuk attacks the party’s supporters. “Voting Labour is an act of gross disloyalty to Labour,” he explains. “If anything, it’s more disloyal than joining.”

Meanwhile, after a dismal night for Ukip Nigel Farage resigns the leadership at 3am on 7 May. At 3.27am, he withdraws his resignation. He re-resigns at 5.28am, and at 7.09am announces he will continue after all. “What the public need from its political leaders, as the EU referendum approaches, is decisiveness,” he insists. “So long as I know my own mind, I’m going nowhere.”

June: On securing the Republican nomination with a clutch of wins in the final primaries on 7 June, Donald Trump pledges to adopt a more conciliatory tone in his run-off against Hillary Clinton.

“Trump has great relationships with mature women who use the bathroom,” he goes on. “Tremendous people, ’uuuuge friends of mine. But Hillary, I mean she’s disgusting, isn’t she? Just disgusting. And I say that with nothing but love and respect for hideous old trouts. But yeeuch. Now let’s get on with restoring American values!”

July: The optimism engendered by England’s perfect qualification record for Euro 2016 in France proves unfounded when Roy Hodgson’s team lose fecklessly in the quarter-finals. When technical problems prevent the BBC broadcasting the ritual riot of self-pity in which phone-in callers blame overpaid players’ lack of patriotism and the preponderance of foreigners in the Premier League, Radio 5 Live sneakily replaces it with a medley of calls from previous shows in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014. No one notices, so there are no complaints.

August: In the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the IAAF president Sebastian Coe comes under pressure when concerns about doping are heightened by an injury to a Russian.

“Obviously we have had our problems,” his lordship tells a news conference. “But the Russian authorities assure me this athlete has been rigorously tested, and a ruptured testicle is hardly a surprise when a pole vaulter’s groin collides with a snapped pole. By the way, I’m absolutely delighted to report that Tatiana is recovering well.”

September: The debate about climate change intensifies after what some regard as an unusual weather event in northern Europe. Others are more phlegmatic. “No doubt the warmists and their New World Order puppet masters will want to pass this off as ‘evidence’ of anthropogenic global warming,” writes Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph. “But from my boyhood in the 1940s, I distinctly recall that barely a September passed by without news of forest fires in Finland.”

October: Iain Duncan Smith calms a fractious Conservative Party conference with a sparkling keynote address. He tells delegates that welfare changes will ensure that “so-called refugees” from “alleged war zones” will no longer become eligible for state support until they have donated both their corneas to short-sighted octogenarian golfers from Surrey. “If they want to be British, they can jolly well prove it by blinding themselves to help get our seniors back behind the wheels of their Jags and on to the first tee,” he says to a standing ovation. “We have a duty to teach them the true meaning of Christian values.”

November: On the morning of the 9th, after a long and fraught night awaiting the result from the last major swing state, the good people of Pennsylvania entrust the leadership of the free world to President-elect Donald J Trump. Within hours, sales of white-hooded garments, wooden crosses and ropes octuple in the Appalachians, while 67 million Americans are seen heading down through Texas towards Mexico before he begins building his wall to keep them in.

December: Christmas is officially cancelled.

Trump is elected President and 67 million Americans are seen heading through Texas to Mexico

Déjà vu: expect England fans to experience a disappointment familiar from 2012 and beyond AFP