One lesson, at least for British politics, of the cursed year we are about to wave goodbye to is that the political agenda can shift very rapidly in response to unexpected events. We have spent a year discussing things we didn't even have words for on NYE 2019.

COVID-19, social distancing, R numbers, tiers, furloughs, a whole lexicon spawned by a virus whose existence we were barely aware of a year ago. 2021 begins with a different puzzle: what happens when an issue which has dominated the agenda suddenly disappears?

While nothing is ever certain, the vaccine rollout and the completion of the UK-EU trade deal make it highly *likely* that the second half of 2021 will be the first extended period of time since perhaps 2014 (if not earlier) where politics is not dominated by Brexit or COVID.

Neither COVID nor Brexit are going to disappear as policy debates, of course, but space is going to open up for the return of other things. What then?

One possibility is the return of pre-Brexit bread and butter politics - public services, state vs market, tax and spend, competence politics - and with it the return of bread and butter political divides. Brexit tribalism fades, traditional alignments recover.

This could involve a great deal of disruption given how much the electoral coalitions of the main parties have changed over the past five years. Neither Con nor Lab should feel confident of holding their current voters - tribal partisanship much weaker than in the past

Another option is that the new identity divides mobilised by Brexit continue to mobilise and organise political conflict, which moves on to other issues. The black lives matter debate this summer might be a harbinger of that.

A likelier spark for renewed identity politics in 2021 is the devolved elections. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the metropolitan mayors all have reasons to run "us against them" campaigns mobilising their voters against "them": Westminster, London, the South, the Tories.

"Take back control" was a v effective message in 2016, used to mobilise resentment against Brussels and break a union. Perhaps in 2021, the PM who rode such resentments to high office will find the same message mobilised against his govt, perhaps breaking another union?

Or perhaps the SNP will keep their powder dry, politics in the other devolved regions will fail to capture the public imagination, and we will instead have a disorientating return to debates about NHS funding settlements, income tax rates and so on.

Whatever happens, the one thing I would bet against is stability next year - the issue agenda is certain to change, and political coalitions which have been in near-constant flux since 2012 are very likely to change in response.