New Year Predictions 2015

At the start of the year I post not my predictions but some of those which people have come out with in the previous 12 months (January 2014’s are here). This time we are weeks from the UK 2015 election, the outcome of which is currently looking uncertain. One of the first people to point out just how uncertain was the pollster, Peter Kellner, in a post on the YouGov website, Ukip, the SNP and the risks of parliamentary paralysis. He explained:

In recent months it has looked unlikely that either Labour or the Conservatives would win an overall majority next year. There is now a real chance that neither will have a secure majority, even in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. 

… In order for us to be certain that a viable two-party coalition with the Lib Dems is available to at least one of the two main parties, the number of Lib Dem MPs must exceed the total of the other minority parties. 

… the decline in Lib Dem support could leave them with fewer MPs than the combined ranks of the ‘other’ minority party MPs. If that happens there is a real possibility that the parliamentary politics of the House of Commons will be exceedingly messy.

Tony Blair, according to the Daily Telegraph on 25 October, thought otherwise:

The Conservatives will win the next general election because of Ed Miliband’s failure to connect with voters, Tony Blair has said. David Cameron will remain in power next year because Labour has not persuaded Britain it is ready to govern, the former Labour prime minister has apparently told friends. Mr Blair’s verdict on Mr Miliband follows criticism of the Labour leader’s performance from several MPs and will increase concern within the party about his ability to win in May. Mr Blair’s apparent prediction was made in a private conversation with long-standing political allies earlier this month. The Telegraph has been given an account of that conversation by one person who was present. 

“The Conservatives will be the next government because Labour has failed to make a good case for itself. That is what Tony thinks,” the person said. “He does not think that Miliband can beat Cameron.”

Just after the Telegraph had gone to print on 24 October, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

And then on 30 December, it was déjà vu all over again. Anne McElvoy tweeted (from Islington, where else?) to puff a piece about to appear in The Economist (incidentally, why does the full URL end “-don’t-go”?):

The key words:

In an interview with The Economist, Mr Blair says that he fears that the next election, due to take place in May 2015, could be a rerun of those before his ascent to the leadership, which regularly ended in disaster for his party. The result in 2015, he quips, could well be an election “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”. Asked if he means a Tory win, Mr Blair confirms: “Yes, that is what happens.”

Next day, surprise, surprise, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

TB’s prediction methodology: heads he wins, tails he doesn’t lose, one might think. But earlier in the month the Independent on Sunday had run a story, Tony Blair wants Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, which, as far as I can tell, went undenied:

Tony Blair is backing Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, the former prime minister's friends have revealed, in an intervention that will set the battle for succession alight. Several Labour frontbenchers are preparing their leadership campaigns in the event that Ed Miliband fails to secure victory next May. But being anointed by the party's most successful leader could be either a blessing or a curse for Mr Umunna, the shadow Business Secretary, given how far Mr Blair's popularity in the wider Labour movement has fallen.

It would hardly be worth expressing an opinion to “friends” unless, of course, he thought the Labour leadership was going to be an issue in 2015. But Blair has other things on his mind. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, he was interviewed by “Yahoo’s Global News Anchor”, Katie Couric, and warned that returning British jihadists ‘could use Kenya terror tactics’ to disrupt UK.

And things could be worse. In October George W Bush’s former Vice President, Dick Cheney, was interviewed by Bill Kristol and warned:

… we’re in a very dangerous period. I think it’s more threatening than the period before 9/11. I think 9/11 will turn out to be not nearly as bad as the next mass casualty attack against the United States, which if and when it comes will be something far more deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters.

Happy New Year.

New Year Predictions 2014

At the start of the year I post about some of the predictions which people have come out with in the previous 12 months –for the record so far, see my post a year ago. This year I’ve picked three (and a half), mostly about the UK 2015 election, the outcome of which may well become apparent in the next 12 months. I’ve avoided the opinions of politicians – obviously Michael Gove is going to say he’s convinced that the Tories will get a majority in 2015, whether he believes it or not. Instead here are some opinions from observers, not players.

Firstly this from John Rentoul in his Independent Eagle Eye blog in July:

I suspect much of the Labour Party has lulled itself into a false sense of Swedenism* because some polls suggest that people think Osborne is an objectionable piece of work. Of course they do; he is a politician and he is currently in government. What this poll does, however, is to compare his policies with those of the other lot, had they been in the despised position of being in government. 

If Labour haven’t persuaded the voters that things would have been better under them by now (and I’m one of the 32 per cent in that last question, incidentally), they are unlikely to do so by the time of the election, now that the economy is picking up a little. And if Labour cannot do that, it cannot win. 

*Swedenism, n: The attribution to the electorate of generous social-democratic qualities.

Next an Oxford academic, Steve Fisher, in October, all very quantitative and objective at 559 days in advance, in a post on his Elections etc blog, pithily titled: A long-range forecast for a 2015 British General Election based on current polls and historical polls and votes:

Forecast Election Day Shares and 95% Prediction Intervals 

Con : 40.2 plus or minus 11.8 i.e. between 28 and 52 

Lab : 31.8 plus or minus 6.6 i.e. between 25 and 38 

LD : 11.8 plus or minus 14.5 i.e. between 0 and 26 

Forecast Election Day Seats 

Con : 337 

Lab : 265 

LD : 21 

Con majority of 24

Another quant with a high reputation is Nate Silver, “the man who knows everything” according to Will Pavia in The Times (£) in April:

What about Britain’s coalition government, I say. Will it survive? He thinks for a moment. “So, I’ve never quite understood,” he says. “What are the Liberal Democrats getting out of the coalition exactly?” He really does ask the most acute questions. As I struggle to supply an answer, he says: “And does Labour have a charismatic leader?” His prediction, based only on the fact that “you have had a rough several years economically”, is that David Cameron will not be re-elected. 

“He’s awfully unpopular right now,” he says. “Look, this is dangerous, because I can extrapolate from the political science literature in the US. In the US context, the economy is not everything, but it’s an awfully large factor and the personalities of the candidates don’t matter very much in nine out of ten cases. I’m not sure if that’s as true in the parliamentary system. I think the economy bit has generally been shown to be true across different parts of the world.” Cameron might as well call in the removal men.

The “half”? Later in the year, Silver also gave his opinion on the outcome of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum in the Scotsman:

... [he] said polling data was “pretty definitive”. “There’s virtually no chance that the Yes side will win”, he said. “If you look at the polls, it’s pretty definitive really where the No side is at 60-55 per cent and Yes side is about 40 or so. “Historically, in any Yes or No vote in a referendum, it’s actually the No side that tends to grow over time, people tend not to default to changing the status quo. 

… “If there was a major crisis in England – if the Eurozone split apart and there were ramifications economically (for the UK) – the maybe things would reconsidered a little bit. But he added: “For the most part it looks like it’s a question of how much the No side will win by, not what the outcome might be.”

New Year Predictions 2012

A year ago in a post on this blog, I recorded three predictions (see below) which had surfaced in 2010 and might prove worth revisiting in time.  Here are three more which came up in 2011.

In March in an interview with the Guardian, Adam Posen,

The Bank of England's leading dove has predicted that inflation will tumble to 1.5% by the middle of next year … “If I have made the wrong call, not only will I switch my vote, I would not pursue a second term. They should have somebody who gets it right and not me.”

In May, Henry Kissinger was interviewed by Simon Schama for the FT (£). He offered a scenario for Afghanistan after US withdrawal:

“An India-Pakistan war becomes more probable. Eventually,” says the Doctor, his voice a deep pond of calm. “Therefore some kind of international process in which these issues are discussed might generate enough restraints so that Pakistan does not feel itself encircled by India and doesn’t see a strategic reserve in the Taliban.” He looks directly at me. “Is it possible to do this? I don’t know. But I know if we let matters drift this could become the Balkans of the next world war.”

Finally, and quite immodestly in such company, I made the suggestion in June that the Queen might retire in April 2016 after her 90th birthday.

I will number these 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3 and have applied the same format to last year’s which were:

10.1 “It will be fascinating to see whether the coalition conceived after the 2010 election holds. It may, since the Lib Dem desire for electoral reform is so intrinsic to them. But if that doesn’t come about, I doubt the coalition will last long. However, I may be wrong ...”
Tony Blair, currently looking as though he was “wrong”, but who knows what may happen in 2012?

10.2 “whoever wins this [2010] election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be”
Attributed to Mervyn King, who may be proved right in that many aspects of the UK’s fiscal austerity have yet to be realised.

10.3 Prince Charles would never be King and that William would succeed his grandmother
Attributed to Princess Diana – too soon to tell.

New Year Predictions

There is a tendency at the end of the year to contemplate the recent past and to consider what could lie ahead, not always drawing optimistic conclusions. This may, of course, be a melancholic reaction to seasonal excesses of food and alcohol. Although I’m not particularly royalist or religious, the tones of King George VI in his 1939 Christmas broadcast, often rerun by the BBC in December, seem to echo this mood. In particular, the King quoted from a poem by Minnie Louise Harkins:

"I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And he replied, 'Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.'"

The speech can be listened to at the CBC archive, but is not available from the BBC. King George VI’s determination to overcome a speech impediment is the subject of an already acclaimed film, The King’s Speech, which will be released in the UK on 7 January. Apparently it closes with the King’s broadcast at the outbreak of the war in September 1939, which is on the BBC website.

1940 turned out to be one of the most calamitous years in British history, almost terminal. Hopefully 2011, for all its likely problems (the eurozone for one), will be relatively forgettable. Nonetheless, it may be timely to record three predictions which surfaced in 2010 and could prove worth revisiting in the course of time, if not in 2011.

First, in September from Tony Blair’s A Journey (page 120 of the UK edition):

“It will be fascinating to see whether the coalition conceived after the 2010 election holds. It may, since the Lib Dem desire for electoral reform is so intrinsic to them. But if that doesn’t come about, I doubt the coalition will last long. However, I may be wrong ...”

Blair is far too smart to make an unqualified prediction, but if he is right (as opposed to “wrong”), before the end of 2011 we may begin to test the second prediction. This was attributed to Mervyn King by a US economist, David Hale, in an interview on Australian TV and reported by Reuters in April:

"I saw the governor of the Bank of England last week when I was in London and he told me whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be"

The third prediction – to be tested well after 2011 one hopes - resurfaced in the media in November when Prince William’s engagement was announced. It had been made by his mother to the effect that Prince Charles would never be King and that William would succeed his grandmother. At Princess Diana’s inquest in 2008, Sandra Davis, head of family law at the elite solicitors Mishcon de Reya, stated that Diana was convinced her prediction that Charles would be forced to stand aside would come true.

End note: I began this blog on 30 October, primarily to amuse myself, and certainly doubtful as to whether there would be any readers. In fact some of my 18 posts since then seem to have gone unhit. However, over 150 visitors have looked at others, coming from countries stretching from the US and Argentina to Singapore, as well as from the UK. Whether anyone has ever felt inclined to come back, I don’t know, certainly I have yet to be left any comments. Anyway, I feel mildly encouraged, and intend in 2011, all being well, to keep posting my views on the same types of topics, and some new ones.

Happy New Year and Bonne Année to anyone who reads this far!