Nick Cohen's latest podcast dropped two days ago. His guest, billed as an expert on the Conservative Party, was Paul-Marshall-era Liberal Democrat turned Reform supporter Nick Tyrone.
In the course of their discussion Tyrone argued that when Robert Jenrick replaces Kemi Badenoch, as he surely will, he'll prove no more popular than she has.
He then suggested that the Tories should go for someone untainted by their 14 years in government and choose a leader from their 2024 intake of MPs.
Pressed for a name, he suggested Patrick Spencer, who was arrested the following day.
Spencer denies the charges against him and may go on to have along political career, even leading his party. But this exchange did reinforce the impression that Tyrone isn't the great political forecaster out there.
Because he has previous. Here he is in the Spectator on the eve of a 2021 by-election:
"The Chesham and Amersham by-election is on Thursday. Thank God it’s almost here — hopefully then we can stop hearing any rubbish about how the Lib Dems are set to tear down the Conservatives’ ‘blue wall’ in the home counties. As the campaign has demonstrated, the Lib Dems are miles away from being able to cause such an upset.
"Instead, the Lib Dems will lose on Thursday, most likely fairly badly, and they will have no one to blame but themselves. If they want to get back to being the by-election masters of old, they will have to do a lot better than this."
As you may recall, Sarah Green won the election for the Lib Dems with a 25 per cent swing from the Conservatives.
He was more confident about the Lib Dem performance in 2015:
Ahead of the 2015 General Election, Tyrone predicted that the Liberal Democrats would receive "17 per cent" of the popular vote and that the vote share for the two largest parties appeared "on course for an all time low".
The two largest parties subsequently both increased their vote share, while the Liberal Democrats received 7.9 per cent.
Nor did he much admire Nigel Farage in the run up to the European Union referendum:
In 2015, Tyrone argued that fellow pro-Europeans should give their "gratitude to Nigel Farage for hanging around the British political scene just a little bit longer" as he believed it would ensure "the pro-Europeans win".
We all like to sound confident when we make predictions, but I wouldn't back any horse that Nick Tyrone tipped.
