A to Z of 2024: From annexation and the Burkes to xenophobia and underwear on the outside

Colin Sheridan takes a look at the year ahead for Irish and world politics, personalities, sporting hopes, and cultural trends

Rhasidat Adeleke is among Ireland's medal hopes at the Paris Summer Olympics. Picture: Dan Sheridan 

A for Annexation

After so long in the wilderness, the annexation of territories is making a strong comeback.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia took the flak for being the first to re-embrace the sinister (and highly illegal) strategy when it violently laid claim to Crimea in 2014. That turned out to be the annexation equivalent of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile. Since Crimea, Putin has invaded Ukraine proper, likely inspiring Azerbaijan’s largely unchecked “appropriation” of the Nagorno-Karabakh, an encircled Armenian enclave, in September 2023.

Israel’s mass annihilation of both the Palestinian population and the Gaza Strip itself is annexation on a whole other level.

What will 2024 bring? Well, watch out Kosovo, you might be next! Serbian premier Aleksandar Vucic, one-time information minister of Slobodan Milosevic, has flip-flopped on the issue of recognising Kosovan sovereignty, a highly emotive issue in both Pristina and Belgrade.

As a fractured EU struggles to consolidate its response to the conflict in Gaza, and Moscow re-establishes itself in a shifting world order, an embattled Vucic could easily go full Netanyahu and deliberately escalate tensions in Kosovo for political gain.

B for Burke, as in ‘The Burkes’

For about eight years from around 2012 to 2020, Mayo held a special place in Irish hearts. A bastion of humility and anti-heroism, the county produced a taoiseach, bestselling novelists, and a football team that, although unable to ultimately win an All-Ireland, stole the hearts of housewives and romantics everywhere.

With familiarity comes contempt, however, indeed contempt is the one word synonymous with the now infamous Burke family, led by their incarcerated son Enoch. What they stand for at this point is probably only known to them and the accidental Burke scholars — the unfortunate court reporters who, like the gardaí, judges, and court officials, have to deal with them on a far too regular basis. How much bandwidth the Burkes will take up in 2024 is anyone’s guess, but if their despicable behaviour towards an elected official out doing his last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve is anything to go by, they seem resolutely intent on being as big a story this year as they were last.

C for CMAT

Those who have followed the musical career of Irish country-pop auteur Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson (CMAT) from the start must surely now be a little annoyed by the sudden attention her viral performances have attracted. Dublin-born Thompson is a superstar in waiting, and should she cross your path in 2024, you should drop everything to see her.

D for Daniel Wiffen

Wiffen, 22, an Irish swimmer from Magheralin, Co Down, destroyed the oldest world swimming record on the books in the 800m freestyle final at the European Aquatics Short Course Championships in Romania in November, catapulting himself into the medal conversation for the Summer Olympics in Paris. The Loughborough student has long been touted as a hot prospect in swimming circles, but, as with all minority sports, it has taken this Olympic cycle to put Wiffen where he deserves to be in our collective consciousness.

E for Evan Ferguson

At the time of writing, Ferguson, 19, has played over 1,000 minutes in the Premier League this season and scored six goals, including a sensational hat-trick against Newcastle. 

Irish football fans will be hoping Evan Ferguson's club form will somehow cross over into the international arena. Picture: James Crombie/Inpho

The trade papers suggest a £100m price tag on his head, while his club Brighton & Hove Albion has moved quickly to safeguard its asset — and the player’s medium-term future — by extending his stay at the club until June 2029.

Every indicator points to a player who justifies the considerable hype that surrounds him. For Irish football fans, the hope will be that his club form will somehow cross over into the international arena, transforming Irish footballing fortunes in the process.

F for Francesca Albanese

In 2022, Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, was appointed United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories for a three-year term. The first woman to hold the position, events since the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 and the Israeli retaliation have thrust her into the international limelight.

Francesca Albanese's takedowns of Western media’s pro-Israeli bias have proven a vitally impartial voice of reason. Picture: Atilgan Ozdil/Anadolu Agency/Getty

Her almost daily takedowns of Western media’s inherently pro-Israeli bias have proven a vitally impartial voice of reason in the polarised hellscape of the Israel-Palestine discourse. In short, she takes absolutely no shit, and makes simple a situation so many seem intent on complicating.

G for Genocide

In the last 80 days, Israel has used a level of munitions equal to more than two nuclear bombs on Gaza. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. If you were to remove the inhumanity from that for just a moment and consider the proportionality of its “response” to the Hamas terror attacks in literally any other context, there is no analogy appalling enough to help simplify the reality. It now seems that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees an endgame in which Palestinians in Gaza are left with two choices: Leave Gaza, or die by bombardment, disease, or starvation. 

It now seems Palestinians in Gaza may be left with two choices: Leave, or die by bombardment, disease, or starvation.  Picture: Mohammed Abed/ AFP

His goal now seems nothing more complex than ending Palestine as both a people and a national movement. If that’s not genocide, what is?

H for Hamilton

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s multi-award-winning cultural phenomenon Hamilton  is coming to Dublin for the first time in September 2024. 

Despite debuting only nine years ago, the musical ranks as the fourth-highest grossing Broadway show of all time. 

It will run for three months at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and promises to bring some much-needed glamour to the Dublin theatre scene.

Hamilton the musical is coming to Dublin for the first time in September 2024. 

I for India

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are campaigning to be re-elected for a third five-year term as the country’s electorate of over 600m people votes in general elections in April 2024. Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the EU) representing about 49% of the people in the world, are meant to hold national elections whose results, for many, will prove consequential for years to come.

J for Jodie Foster

Tipped for a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her twist alongside Annette Benning in Nyad, Foster will hit our screens in the fourth instalment of HBO’s much-anticipated True Detective  in January.

K for Kafala

A nice word, right? Rolls off the tongue. A handy one to have in the locker to make you sound smart. Kafala is the Arabic word that defines adoption or, more specifically, sponsorship.

A year on from the World Cup in Qatar, nothing much has changed for migrant workers in the country, despite the governing body’s appeals to the International Labour Organisation and cosmetic changes to Qatari law.

Every human rights body from Amnesty to FairSquare describes the tournament as a “wasted opportunity”, words fully justified by documentary evidence from various reports that abuses of workers are “still continuing”. Saudi Arabia has an even worse human rights record than Qatar. In 2024 the Saudis are hosting a Formula One race and are looking to invest some $5bn into cricket’s Indian Premier League. That’s before we even get to LIV golf and an insidious creep into football.

L for Limerick hurlers

No intercounty hurling team has ever won five All Irelands in a row. Limerick enter 2024 as odds-on favourites to make history, and in doing so, lock themselves in as one of the greatest teams the game has ever seen.

The benevolence of their benefactor JP McManus, who gifted €1m to every county board before Christmas, may have softened the scepticism of Limerick’s many detractors. It will matter very little come summer, however. Put simply, if the Treaty survive the Munster championship, they may be impossible to stop. Immortality awaits them.

M for Megalopolis

Described as ‘Francis Ford Coppola’s $100m gamble’, The Godfather  director’s long-gestated self-funded movie epic Megalopolis  has already acquired a mythical status in Hollywood. A passion project the 83-year-old has been planning since the time he made Apocalypse Now, it was originally conceived as an ensemble piece about a post-financial crisis New York City, and almost got under way back in 2001 until the September 11 acts intervened. Adam Driver, Dustin Hoffman, and Laurence Fishburne are to star in the movie event of the year, set for release at the end of summer.

N for Nepo Baby

Short for nepotism baby, the term referring to the children of celebrities who have succeeded in careers similar to those of their parents, Nepo babies are nothing new but 2024 looks set to be a bumper year for the beatified few.

While many of the cohort elicit nothing but scorn for their privilege, there are others who seem self-aware enough to poke fun at their status. Check out Jack Henry Robbins, son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins (technically a ‘double nepo baby’), whose satirical short “day in the life of a nepo baby” on Instagram does just enough to cheer you up, allowing you to see how the 1% live without having to hate them.

O for Oscar Buzz

How will Cillian Murphy, the most no-nonsense actor of his generation, handle the overwhelming sycophancy that goes with winning an Oscar? We may be set to find out, as the Cork man’s performance in  Oppenheimer  looks set, at the very least, to secure him a seat at the Best Actor nominations table.

Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, and Florence Pugh attend the 'Oppenheimer' UK premiere. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty

Almost impervious to praise, Murphy may have to bite his lip and just accept the plaudits from the plebs, should he win the golden statue. If nothing else, expect his speech to be short.

P for Paris

One hundred years on from the last Olympics in the City of Lights, Paris will host the summer games from July 26 to August 11. A short flight from home, expect many Irish fans to travel to support the magnificent Rhasidat Adeleke and Ciara McGeean, the country’s best medal hopes in track and field since Sonia O’Sullivan a quarter of a century ago.

Adeleke, especially, looks set to become a bona fide superstar of athletics. With our boxers as strong as ever, our rowers quietly confident, and the aforementioned Daniel Wiffen set to star in the pool, Paris has the potential to be the greatest Olympics Ireland has ever seen.

Q for Qualify for something

The Republic of Ireland breaking up with Stephen Kenny was a long and painful experience, akin to dumping somebody you liked but your parents loved. Almost everybody wanted it to work, and the forever-embattled FAI deserve some credit for giving Kenny every chance.

Having failed to qualify for this summer’s Euros in Germany (by some distance), whoever the FAI opt for next can only realistically deal in the currency of reaching the next World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the US in 2026. We need to qualify for something. Anything. Even a grant. To his credit, Kenny gave youth a chance. Whoever follows needs to find a way to weaponise that potential.

R for Range Anxiety

According to the SEAI, there are a little over 80,000 electric vehicles (including plug-ins and hybrids) on Irish roads, and the number is rising. The Government has a target that there will be 945,000 electric vehicles on Irish roads by 2030. With the supply and demand of EVs increasing, so is the number of people suffering from what I call ‘range anxiety’, a condition rampant among new EV owners. 

The grants are good for EVs. So too are the apps and online support groups, but the worry for drivers undertaking their first long trip from Dublin to Kerry for a wedding in July is profound. 

With the supply and demand of EVs increasing, so is the number of drivers suffering ‘range anxiety’ when undertaking their first long trip.  Picture: Chani Anderson

Will the triple-phase plug be functioning and free as you pass through Moneygall on the way south? Will you have to divert to Clonmel? How will you manage the whisper fighting in front of the kids? There’s plenty of schadenfreude to go round too. All your friends who told you an EV was a bad idea. Trust me, they’re just waiting for you to fail.

S for Swifteconomics

When Taylor Swift brings her Eras tour to a city, the economic impact is so profound that a new word has been coined: Swiftenomics. A recent study estimated that the totality of Swift’s US tour could generate $4.6bn in total consumer spending, larger than the GDP of 35 countries.

The pop icon comes to Dublin for three consecutive nights in late June 2024. It promises to be the largest single event the city will have hosted in terms of residual economic impact.

Taylor Swift comes to Dublin for three consecutive nights in late June 2024. Picture: David Eulitt/Getty

 For those of us who’ve already watched her Eras tour — under performative duress — in cinemas and sitting rooms, we should be quietly relieved the chances of landing a ticket are one in a million. Expect some ‘Bad Blood’ for our spineless surrender.

T for Threads

The text-based conversation app, according to Meta, is designed to be a space “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow”. 

Where have we heard that before? Launched last July, Threads is intended as Meta’s competition to X, formerly Twitter. It took the platform four days and six hours to reach 100m users. In the almost six months since, it only added another 44m. X boasts around 556m users, but under Elon Musk’s leadership, the app is perennially on the brink of oblivion. 2024 will be the year Threads either steps up as a true competitor, or disappears.

U for Underwear on the Outside

Underwear as outerwear, underwear as everyday clothing — however you want to phrase it, if you’re travelling to Paris, London, or New York this year, expect to see a lot of knickers. It’s unclear how or why the trend managed to become a trend — I certainly remember pulling on my underpants over my dungarees as a young fella — but, it’s a thing.

So far, it seems, for women only. Knickers outside tights. We need Paul Mescal to step up, pull his jocks over his skinny jeans and make us all feel a little more metro about ourselves.

V for Viktor Orbán

As Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in the EU, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán looks set to be the most divisive European leader in 2024. Last month at a pivotal EU meeting, having unexpectedly relented on accession negotiations for Moldova and Ukraine to the union, Orbán later delighted the Kremlin and shocked his European partners by vetoing a €50bn, four-year financial aid package to Kyiv.

Last year, Orbán spoke of the “Hungarian desire to not want to become a people of mixed race”.

As Putin’s closest ally in the EU, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán looks set to be the most divisive European leader in 2024. Picture: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty

The EU has withheld some €20bn in funds from Hungary for failing to meet the conditionality around its release. Among those conditions are judicial independence, anti-LGBTQ legislation, academic freedom, and migration policies. Whether simply Putin’s stooge, or a Machiavellian autocrat, Orbán looks set to live, very much rent- free, in the minds of MEPs this coming year.

W for What — seriously!

When Rudy Guiliani hosted a farcical press conference at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping business in Philadelphia four years ago, it looked set to be a fitting final nail in the coffin of Donald Trump’s absurd presidency.

Joe Biden inspired very few, but at least represented a more palatable brand of diplomacy. A safe pair of hands, so to speak.

Should he remain out of prison, Donald Trump looks set to face down a failing Joe Biden in this November’s US elections.  Picture: Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty 

It speaks volumes of Biden’s dereliction of moral duty over Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip that, should he remain out of prison, Trump looks set to face down a failing Biden in this November’s US elections.

The Democrats’ failure to groom a suitable alternative to Biden is a damning indictment of a dysfunctional party. That Trump could survive being complicit in an insurrection on the nation’s capital while still in office says much about how broken America has truly become.

If it were Nicaragua, they’d be laughing their asses off.

X for Xenophobia

“Ireland is full’’, so far-right actors have been telling us, and as absurd as most of the country thought such slogans to be, events in Dublin in November and the burning of a hotel in Connemara earmarked for refugees before Christmas have highlighted how mainstream such divisive verbiage has become. 2024 will undoubtedly test the lessons learned by both Government and the gardaí, as the sad reality is that they will be tested in their response to such xenophobic rhetoric and malfeasance again.

Y for Yemen

With its long sea border between eastern and western civilisations, Yemen has long existed at a crossroads of cultures with a strategic location in terms of trade on the west of the Arabian Peninsula.

As warring parties commit to a new ceasefire and agree to engage in a United Nations-led peace process to end the war, attacks by Houthi rebels on key shipping lanes in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have intensified. If they continue to engage, it will draw Israel and its allies into another front, as well as escalating a crisis in shipping not witnessed since the Suez.

Z for Generation Z

The workplace has been subject to mini-revolutions since the pandemic, and the next threat to its current hybrid iteration is the arrival of Generation Z — those born from the mid 90s on — the first generation born into our ubiquitously digital world.

Regardless of the pandemic, such is the intellectual dexterity of this new generation, employers will have to guarantee the ability to work with geographically dispersed teams and attract talent from anywhere in the world. For these reasons, we’ll see the number of job postings with “remote” or “hybrid” locations remain well above pre-covid levels throughout 2024.