Usually, when I sit down to make a list it is a form of procrastination. Once a year, however, I can put my list-making habit to a practical use – when I write an end-of-year column, picking the five “defining moments” of the past 12 months.

This year has been a vintage one for news, most of it grim. It took just a few moments to scribble down my top four: the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Barack Obama, the Beijing Olympics and the Russia-Georgia war. The fifth choice was more difficult, so I canvassed suggestions from readers of my blog.

They came up with a wide range of suggestions. The most frequent was the terrorist attack on Mumbai. Other events that came up several times were Kosovo’s declaration of independence, Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy’s six months as “president” of Europe, the first ever Group of 20 nations summit, the US-India nuclear deal, the revival of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the continued disintegration of Somalia and Zimbabwe. Some wanted me to include more financial events – a reasonable enough suggestion in the year of the credit crunch. Ideas included: “The fall of the house of Madoff” and “Iceland goes kerplunk”. The most unusual suggestion was “Australia’s decline in Test and one-day cricket” (from an Indian).

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I have got into the habit of finishing every December, with a column that tries to list the five most politically significant events of the year. I plan to publish this year’s list on December 23rd. It seems to me there are four events that have to make the list: the election of Obama, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Beijing Olympics and the Russian invasion of Georgia.

But what should be my fifth event? Please send nominations by the end of the week.

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

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