It’s a long-shot but it’s not over yet
Opinion
What were the odds of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu all being gone by the end of this year, and Farage never becoming PM? It could all still happen, says Ray Snoddy.
Predicting the future is a tricky business at the best of times.
But going for a four-part accumulator at huge odds is really dangerous, even if the predictions were made only in a private family gathering rather than in the public domain more than a year ago.
What indeed were the odds at that time of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu all being gone in some form by the end of this year?
To add to the risk, it was also brave to say that when Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was riding high in the polls month after month, he would never become Prime Minister of the UK.
My predictions were greeted with mirth and derision
Always the hopeless optimist, the accusation went, and although scarcely alone, were you not the one who confidently stated that the people of the UK would not be daft enough to vote for Brexit, and that Americans were surely too smart to give Trump a second term?
That was then. The new predictions are in surprisingly good shape, although the timetable looks tight and the precise mechanisms by which the multiple defenestrations will actually occur are far from clear.
The band is, however, already playing and there is a clear leitmotif from right to left in at least some countries: Orban gone in Hungary, Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil and Vucic in Serbia.
But the big ones, the really big ones, are obviously Trump, Putin and Netanyahu with Farage hanging onto their coat-tails.
First up, Netanyahu in yesterday’s elections in Israel
Working out what is happening in Israeli politics makes three-dimensional chess look like kid’s stuff with 38 parties, many of them new or having recently changed their names.
But Netanyahu is behind in the polls, not helped by revelations carried in the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Israeli Prime Minister was warned by the United Arab Emirates days before the October 7th massacre that Hamas was planning major attacks.
Netanyahu denies the allegations and is suing the paper for defamation.
It could be weeks before we know whether the opposition will be able to form a government that will oust the Israeli Prime Minister, but the prediction is still very much alive.
With Trump, you never know, but the Republican candidates standing for the House of Representatives and the Senate in next week’s Midterms are behind in the polls.
Trump has made the vote a personal referendum by telling people to imagine his name is on the ballot.
American journalists have woken from their slumbers and are increasingly pushing back in the face of Trump nonsense.
Now when Trump says “many people are saying I am one of the greatest American presidents”, reporters are at last saying to his face: “No one is saying that.”
TV crews are also pulling their cameras out to show ranks of empty seats at Trump rallies and to show the President waving and saluting at no one in particular before boarding the Presidential helicopter.
Traditionally Republican supporting or independent newspapers, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, have endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio.
Ironically, it was Trump’s attack on Iran, something that Netanyahu had pushed for, that led to the rise in gas prices, which could be his political undoing, and his unpopular increasing support for Putin in his war against Ukraine.
The problem is how to actually get rid of Trump
Removal through impeachment needs a two-thirds majority of Senators present.
Removal under the 25th Amendment for incapacity requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate if the President refuses to step down.
Only media pressure on the Republicans after a disastrous Mid-Term result would do the trick.
Time is short, but the prediction is still alive.
Under any rational system of government, Putin would already be gone because of the failure of his attack on Ukraine, an estimated 1.5m military casualties – dead and wounded- and the crippling of the Russian economy, particularly because of attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russia’s energy infrastructure.
With rigged elections and the stamping out of any independent media, it is difficult to see how Putin can be removed other than through ill health, a coup or assassination.
The other possibility with rigid dictatorships is always that they simply reach the point of no return and implode overnight.
The clock is ticking on Putin.
As for Farage, although no time limit was applied to the prediction, his chance, if there ever was one, of becoming Prime Minister has likely passed.
A year ago Farage was riding high with no less than 36% in the polls, which would have led to an overwhelming Parliamentary majority had there been an election. Now Reform is bumping around the 20% mark behind the Conservatives, with Andy Burnham’s Labour on 29%.
Things could change after today’s budget, but it is difficult to see how Reform could recover now that the media has exposed multiple threats. They range from foreign funding, all of which may or may not be legal, to exposure of the incompetence of Reform-run local authorities and ITV’s undercover investigations of deep-seated racism within the party.
In many ways, the media drove Farage’s rise, particularly the BBC. It then became a self-reinforcing process. Reform is up in the polls and could, in theory, be the next government, so it gets more coverage, which further boosts the polls.
Unfortunately for Farage, the process also works in reverse. A collapse in the polls leads to declining coverage… culminating in acres of empty seats for Monday’s press conference and policy announcements.
The final nail in the coffin, at least so far as government is concerned, could come with Farage facing a Commons exclusion over the £5m personal donation, followed by yet another farcical Clacton by-election, with or without Count Binface.
Four courageous predictions in the Yes Minister sense of the word, but all four are still alive and look less preposterous each day that passes.
There could also be a domino effect because of the personal connections involved. We can only hope.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here