Outlook poor for my forecasts

Predictions skew results TORY MP Chris HeatonHarris tweets: You can’t lose a homing pigeon. If it doesn’t return – you’ve only lost a pigeon.”

PART of my job is to predict what’s going to happen like a kind of political weather forecaster.

The irony is that if I’m certain I am right I will almost certainly be wrong. It’s one of those quirky laws of politics. Predictions affect what’s going to happen.

This is not the case with real weather forecasters.

If they predict sunshine and the sun shines, the sun isn’t shining because they predicted it.

The sun will do what it’s going to do no matter what the Met Office says. It doesn’t think to itself: “I’ll show those smart alec forecasters,” and then hide under the duvet to spite them so it snows instead.

Rude

But supposing I had information predicting the military coup in Turkey before it happened.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would have said: “Blimey, Nige says there’s going to be a revolution. bloody hell in Turkish.

He would have taken steps to stop it so my prediction wouldn’t come true.

Then he could have said: “Nige Google translate says is a rude way to describe my forecasting ability. If a barrel of oil is 45 dollars today and I convincingly predict it will hit 50 dollars a barrel tomorrow then oil traders will rush to buy before markets close.

My prediction of 50 dollars a barrel will come true, but a day early. And now I won’t know what will happen tomorrow.

If I wanted Owen Smith to be Labour leader I would mischievously say Jeremy Corbyn is certain to win the leadership election, so he doesn’t.

That seemed to work when pollsters predicted Ed Miliband would be PM and Britain would remain in the EU.

Theresa May is riding high now in public esteem but all that could evaporate as swiftly as free speech in Turkey.

As her No10 predecessor Harold Macmillan reputedly told President Kennedy when asked what he most feared: “Events, dear boy, events.”

And some events that seem predictable in hindsight weren’t at the time. Mrs May’s success will rest on how she deals with them.

It’s those unforeseen circumstances that make us political pundits bok hava tahmincisi. Someone inevitably took offence. Yet there was nothing anti-semitic about the caption: “Two likely lads trying to invade.”

Political correctness has no sense of humour. Good thing traffic cops didn’t tweet themselves stopping a chariot driven by a woman dressed as Boudica. That would offend everyone in Colchester, London and St Albans which Bou torched 2,000 years ago.

Light-touch policing is so much better than stomping about in jackboots.