As 2021 begins we have to hope it'll be better than 2020. But we've had hope before, not always realistically, and normality may still be some time off. So I thought I'd ask, when do you think all this might be over?
I'd like to propose 'the Christmas test'.
Imagine an unlimited number of households being able to travel across England to meet inside somebody else's home. When do you think we might be able to have a normal Christmas again? It doesn't have to be December 25th, it could be any replacement date to make up for the one we didn't just have. It might not be this year. When's the first time, legally speaking, a normal Christmas might be allowed?
Pick a month and a year and leave your prediction here. predictions
I'm asking because we're notoriously bad at predicting the future, and because when that future arrives we often forget how bad we were at predicting it. You proved this in a similar experiment exactly six months ago.
On 2nd July 2020 I invited you to predict which one of eight alternative futures we'd be in on 2nd January 2021. Not the future you wanted, but the one you expected. That day is now here, and your predictions were way off beam.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
LOCKDOWN
NEW NORMAL
HARD BREXIT
DEAL
HARD BREXIT
DEAL
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
11%
12%
2%
4%
20%
27%
7%
17%
We ended up in future number 4, i.e. LOCKDOWN/DEAL/NOT TRUMP.
But six months ago only 4% of you guessed this correctly.
The five soothsayers were K, Matt, Alex, Gosforth Gary and Friar Sven.
The other 116 of us were wrong.
In particular almost 50% of you plumped for a NEW NORMAL with a HARD BREXIT, i.e. options 5 or 6, and that's where you messed up.
To take each layer in turn...
LOCKDOWN 30%
NEW NORMAL 70%
Thursday 2nd July was just as the first lockdown was ending and we were about to be allowed back into pubs and restaurants. Perhaps it's unsurprising that so many of you were optimistic about the future back then. But the science always said pandemics tend to come in waves, and winter brings its own challenges too, so a second peak was always on the cards. To my mind this was the obvious one - I ummed and ahhed far more about Trump and Brexit. But a large majority of you didn't think lockdown was coming back, and have alas been proved wrong.
HARD BREXIT 70%
DEAL 30%
Six months ago more than two-thirds of us were convinced no Brexit deal would be done. Perhaps we had no confidence in our government's willingness to compromise, perhaps we didn't think the EU would be agreeable or perhaps we were simply going along with the prevailing view at the time. There is a school of thought that the government's strategy was always to make No Deal sound likely in order to retain the strongest possible negotiating position, even though they never intended to go through with it. That insight may sound convincing in retrospect, but six months ago few of us saw through it.
TRUMP 40%
NOT TRUMP 60%
We did better on Donald Trump. Back in July most of us thought he was on his way out, and indeed he was. If the pandemic did the world one favour in 2020 it was to expose his presidential shortcomings and provide Joe Biden with an untweakable margin of victory. But six months ago 40% of you still thought he'd be staying in the White House, however odd that sounds today.
Overall 4% of you guessed all three things correctly, 32% got two right, 45% got only one right and 20% predicted all three wrong. We'd have done better guessing purely at random.
There's more. I asked you to make exactly the same prediction in November on the day of the presidential election. You did better this time.... but still not well.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
LOCKDOWN
NEW NORMAL
HARD BREXIT
DEAL
HARD BREXIT
DEAL
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
TRUMP
NOT
TRUMP
22%
26%
4%
23%
7%
11%
2%
6%
In November a quarter of us guessed correctly. The big shift was from the right hand side of the chart to the left, as 75% of us now thought January would mean lockdown. The shift on Brexit and Trump was much smaller, edging towards the correct result by a few percentage points but essentially the same as in July. Most of us still thought Trump would lose, eventually, and believed we wouldn't get a deal two months before we did.
I predicted correctly in November, so I'm pleased with that. But I messed up in July, getting No Deal wrong, even though I'm kicking myself now because it should have been obvious (but wasn't).
So do go back to the top of the post and predict when you think a normal Christmas might happen. Almost all of us will be wrong, perhaps too optimistic, perhaps not optimistic enough, but it'll be highly instructive to look back when it finally happens.
