How I predicted (nearly) everything that has happened since the Brexit vote

Trying to predict politics is a mug’s game, but some people just can’t help themselves

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It was selective and ungenerous of Private Eye to reprint one or two paragraphs of mine that turned out, for reasons beyond my control, to be similar but not quite identical to what actually happened. Typical of the post-truth journalism of the Remainstream media.

Why did Ian Hislop fail to include these three brilliant predictions of mine that have been proved nearly right?

1. I said Boris Johnson’s career would come to a sudden end – admittedly after a “confusing financial scandal that prompted him to resign” after he had been prime minister for a few years.

In that article I also said that Leave would win the referendum by a tiny majority and I pointed out that “polling by James Morris of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that, as voters are exposed to the arguments, they become more likely to say they intend to vote Leave”. So I quoted someone else’s research that turned out to be really quite prescient.

2. I said Theresa May could be David Cameron’s successor. “Maybe, when the leadership election comes … she will still be standing while all those around her have fallen.” You would have to be a pretty small-minded post-truther to note that the three dots are where I have taken out “in three years’ time”.

3. And I said Andrea Leadsom had “had a good referendum campaign”. I thought she might be the Stop Boris candidate. It is a mere detail that she ended up being the Stop Theresa candidate. I may have also said, “I believe Michael Gove when he says he wouldn’t run,” but only nitpickers would want to dwell on that.

So, basically, I predicted everything that happened. Apart from the predictions I got wrong.