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If you’re looking for a word to sum up 2022, you couldn’t do much better than “permacrisis”. Collins Dictionary defines this as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events”, which is probably why it has chosen permacrisis as its word of the year. It helps that it’s an ugly, ungainly, unwieldy construct that manages to sound less elegant than just using the two words – permanent crisis – it is intended to replace. Which, when you think about it, is so on brand for 2022. Nevertheless, there is very little dispute that 2022 is living up to the meaning of permacrisis, so much so that Collins Dictionary could probably just replace the existing definition with “2022”. In the case of the UK, the extended period of instability is not confined to 2022 and can be traced back at least until a certain event in 2016, if not further. In fact, you could legitimately argue that the period between 2016 and 2022 has been one of permacrisis for many countries, including the UK ...