Yes, you’ll be a couple of kilos lighter, you’ll take more exercise, you’ll definitely follow-up on all those promises to meet up with relatives and friends, and you’ll stop whining about how bad things are and focus on the good stuff. No you won’t. Because 2026 is already shaping up to be one of the most cataclysmic years in history.

The insane fascist in the White House has already embarked on what looks like a geopolitical January sale, threatening to either blow up or buy any country in the world which doesn’t adhere to his “might is right” rampage across the globe. It’s becoming easier to list the countries that he doesn’t want to destroy than those with a target on their back. And his state-sanctioned murder and violence isn’t restricted to foreign countries. His knuckle-dragging ICE cowboys are now fully on the loose in cities across the USA, shooting and killing protesters with impunity. Trump has also sought to decimate absolutely crucial medical programmes at home with his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”. This nauseous piece of legislation cuts over $1 trillion dollars from established health care programmes, which represents the largest rollback of support for health care in American history.

So, fancy watching routinely armed law enforcement officers similar to ICE gangs crashing into communities and places of employment in the UK to terrorise everyone and detain immigrants? Would you rather pay expensive private insurance to ensure your access to crucial healthcare? Then look no further than recent political polling in the UK which puts Nigel Farage’s Reform party on course for a possible victory in the next general election. Farage has made no secret of his desire to expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants, even those who have secured indefinite leave to remain in the UK. And his desired methods for doing so would be to replicate the unaccountable, armed to the teeth, rogue state knuckleheads of ICE on our streets. Try to imagine that here for just one second.

Added to this, Farage is also hell bent on dismantling the current funding model for our NHS and replacing it with private medical insurance. He has been caught on film saying as much. In the USA, even having a baby in hospital is subject to wildly fluctuating costs ranging from $3,400 with insurance, to $30,000 without insurance. Try to imagine that here for just one second.

Whenever Farage appears in the media, commentators tend to focus on his abhorrent immigration policies which, ironically, always gives him an easy out. He can double down on the poisonous rhetoric about immigrants knowing full well that his supporters, who are hanging off lampposts trying to attach beer-sodden flags to them, will lap it up. There will be no changing of minds if immigration is all he gets to talk about. However, this is where Jimmy, one of the locals in the Bowlers Rest, comes into his own.

Recently, Jimmy was having a conversation with friends about Farage and his dangerous tread towards power when he summed up in a nutshell what every commentator should press Farage on whenever he appears in the media. Put simply, to ask him directly if he will pledge to continue the funding model for the NHS which has been in place since its inception should he ever get the keys to Downing Street. And keep asking him until you get a straight answer. Given Farage’s intimate relationship with individuals who own huge insurance companies and who would appear like wolves at the first hint of a change in funding policy, he would be tying himself in knots trying to dodge the issue. And that might just serve as a wake-up call to the millions of people who depend on the NHS and as such, also depend on the many dedicated and skilled immigrants who work within it.

There are a whole swathe of elections coming up in 2026, from the American midterms (if Trump allows them to go ahead), to the Scottish Parliament elections, and local and mayoral elections in England and Wales. If the polls are correct, then Farage’s clown circus Reform could be skulking ever closer to power.

It’s time to stop pandering to their basest, ill-informed instincts and pin them down on what’s really behind their masks - more faces than the town clock.

Ask Jimmy, he knows the score.