In September I made the ghastly error of jumping the gun and assuming it'd be Liz Truss, because she'd just moved into Number 10 and it was inconceivable she'd be Britain's shortest serving Prime Minister. But Liz proved so ill-suited to the job that she was out of the door within 50 days having left the country's finances in turmoil, and good riddance.
So the actual winner is the man who knifed Boris and came second to Liz, the billionaire Rishi Sunak. Congratulations, second time around, to the 9 people who guessed correctly.
• Tory members will want a air of competence and confidence after Boris. [Dan]
• The public school and wealth confidence of Boris, plus an air of competence and the impression of having some intelligence, plus a shrewd political operator. [Sarah]
• If the Tory party can handle a serial shagger with an unkown number of kids by multiple partners, they can handle a black guy...can't they? [mark addy]
• Who I think, not who I want. [Ambienf]
• I'd love to say "anyone else" but I guess it'll be Sunak [Gunnersaurus]
• :( [NB]
• Sunak- the least worst option. [Richard]
• Yes [normla]
• Not that I'm happy about it! [TomH]
It's not a terribly prophetic set of reasons, indeed those who voted for Liz gave a much better account of why she'd win, but in the end the default candidate won out. Also note that there were 47 plausible but false predictions in the non-Rishi comments boxes, which just goes to show how bad we are at foretelling the future even twelve months ahead.
I'd like to think we can do better than a 16% success rate.
So today would be a good day to ask you to look into the future again.
What do you think will be the outcome of the next General Election?
Pick the outcome you expect, not the outcome you want. Keep any accompanying text short.
Any other comments in the box below, thanks.
We don't yet know when the next General Election will be.
It could be (just) over two years away!
But after it happens I'll come back and see if we guessed any better this time.
