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As they return to parliament every MP knows there will be one main theme which will dominate the political year.

The economy.

"This will be the year that the cuts start to bite," Luton South Labour MP Gavin Shuker. "People are only just starting to get an idea about how bad things will be.

"My local authority has got to cut 47% of its budget over the next four years and that will have an effect on local services and jobs - and that will be replicated across the whole of the East of England."

Ministers are also admitting it will be a bad year, while insisting it's not their fault.

It's put most prosaically by the Huntingdon MP Jonathan Djanogly on his website: "The continuing dark clouds of our debt legacy and foreign banking crises hang over us with the potential to burst at any time," he says, before wishing his constituents "fortitude" in the year ahead.

This will be a make or break year for the coalition.

VAT and fuel duty have already gone up. In the next month our local councils will finalise their budgets for the year and in doing so, cut dozens of services and hundreds of jobs.

In April, child benefit will be frozen, while thousands of middle income families will find it harder to qualify for tax credits. (We should also point out that 900,000 low earners will be better off when they're taken out of the tax system altogether in April but overall there will be more losers than winners once the new financial year starts).

"The measures set out in the Comprehensive Spending Review.... will be difficult for the Government" according to Norman Lamb, North Norfolk MP and special advisor to Nick Clegg, but he believes that by the end of the year the economy will be improving and people will see that the pain has been worth it.

"When governments take tough decisions of this sort we're not courting popularity, I think it's a question of being resilient, being disciplined and keeping your eye on the bigger picture," he says.

But the bigger picture is unlikely to be very clear by May when all of the region will get the chance to vote in the local elections. The Conservatives and particularly the Lib Dems are expecting a torrid time. Labour is more optimistic.

"This will be the start of the Labour fight back in the East," says Gavin Shuker, one of just two Labour MPs left in the region. "If you look at the elections we fought four years ago, we were at a very low ebb, so the only way is up. This year could lay the foundations for a big win for us in the General Election of 2015."

There will be other events which will impact on the region's politics this year: the AV referendum in May could pave the way for a big changes in the political make-up of the region. If it were to be adopted the region could, in the future, have fewer Conservative and more Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.

And what about Afghanistan? More troops and airmen from our region are due to deploy there this year. Will it be for the final time? Ministers still hope the first withdrawal of British troops will happen this year.

"A political settlement must become more of a priority," says Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Harwich and North Essex MP, and former member of the Defence Select Committee.

"We have found it to be far more protracted and difficult than we first thought. I expect we will now see a greater emphasis on a political solution to the conflict and less emphasis on the military," he adds.

Suffolk MP Matthew Hancock (Con) is hoping this will be the year that work finally starts on duelling the A11. While many MPs with rural constituencies hope the long promised investment in broadband will finally become reality.

But it will the economy which dominates. We will be watching for three important things this year:

• Will the public continue to accept that severe spending cuts need to be made or will the opposition grow?
• Will the private sector ride to the rescue? The government is banking on companies creating thousands of new jobs in 2011 and diluting the effect of the public sector job losses. If that does not start to happen this year the recovery will be in trouble.
• And finally, what about the Big Society? Will that step up to the challenge to take over the running of services which government and local authorities can no longer provide? If they might mitigate the effects of the cuts up to a point but if there aren't enough volunteers and charitable groups out there to help, it could get rough.

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