Basil Brush for PM? What a foxy prediction
The only point in electing a new Tory leader, it increasingly seems, is so that everyone can enjoy predicting who their successor will be.
In the early eighties, when Margaret Thatcher was confidently being predicted to lose her first General election as Prime Minister, most of the experts were convinced that Francis Pym would be her successor. By 1987, Pym was a forgotten figure. A poll of Conservative MPs showed that John Moore was now the hot favourite to be the next leader.
John who? Coincidentally, Moore died last week, another largely forgotten figure. Like Mrs May, his downfall was preceded by an inopportune coughing fit. One afternoon at the Despatch Box, he started to cough and then couldn’t stop coughing. It was particularly awkward for him, as he had always made a point of showing how healthy he was, and kept a cycling machine in his office.
Mrs Thatcher, always suspicious of illness, thinking it a sign of weakness, demoted him shortly afterwards. She went on to sack him a year later.
eventually, Mrs Thatcher was succeeded by the random figure of John Major, whom no one saw coming. The moment he was elected, everyone started predicting his likely successor.
‘The balance of probability is that Michael heseltine will be Prime Minister by the end of the year,’ was Andrew Marr’s prediction, back in 1994.
Three years later, John Major lost to Tony Blair, and there was another Conservative leadership election, heralding another flood of predictions. ‘This is, I think, a historic moment in the history of the Conservative Party. It is the end of years of conflict,’ said Michael heseltine, with his usual confidence, backing the doomed Odd Couple ticket of Ken Clarke and John Redwood.
The only reliable prediction is that most predictions will prove wrong. This is borne out by history.
‘england is at last ripe for revolution,’ said Leon Trotsky in 1925.
‘The United States will not be a threat to us for decades,’ said Adolf hitler in November 1940.
‘The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad,’ said the president of the Michigan
Savings Bank in 1903, having advised henry Ford’s lawyer against investing in the Ford Motor Company.
events are far too dotty and random to permit prediction. Who would have predicted that millions of TV viewers would want to watch cakes being baked? Or that Prince harry would marry an American actress and they would have a child called Archie harrison? Or that the U.S. would elect the goofy reality TV star Donald J. Trump as President?
I once interviewed different economists about their best and worst predictions. One told me that his worst prediction was also his best: one year, he predicted a collapse in the economy, only for the economy to thrive; ten years later, he made the same prediction and it came true.
You might think caution is the safest solution, but it can end up seeming just as daft as recklessness. In 1949, the editor of Popular Mechanics magazine confidently predicted: ‘Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.’ ‘everything that can be invented, has been invented,’ the head of the U.S. Patent Office purportedly told President McKinley in 1899. Inventions always come as a surprise. People then either overrate the power of the invention, or underrate it. There is also a certain amount of wishful thinking involved. In 1946, predicting that television wouldn’t last, the famous film producer Darryl Zanuck said: ‘People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.’
Closer to our own day, in 2007, the CEO of Microsoft predicted: ‘There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.’
NO ONE wants to be the person who turned down The Beatles on the grounds that ‘there is no future to four-piece groups with guitars’. Or the film executive who in 1927 predicted the rise and rise of the silent movie, asking: ‘Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?’
Yet, despite all the evidence, we remain hooked on prediction. Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab or Rory Stewart? Will Boris make a pact with Nigel Farage? And who will succeed Boris? And who will take over from Jeremy Corbyn? Keir Starmer? emily Thornberry? Basil Brush?