Predicting Political Events

 or 

Why We Keep Guessing at the Wrapped Present

 

The future is the next moment. We live in a permanent transition between the past and what comes next, and the thin strip we call the present is mostly a polite fiction. Yet we spend enormous energy trying to predict what lies on the other side of it — and we are, with remarkable consistency, wrong.

The easy prediction is: predicting that our predictions will fail. The harder questions are the ones we rarely stop to ask. Why do we predict in the first place? What exactly are we predicting? And would our behaviour be any different because of our predictions?

I cannot answer these questions definitively. But I think they are worth unpacking, because how we answer them determines whether political prediction is a useful discipline or an elaborate form of self-reassurance, or self-destruction.

 

Not all predictions are alike. At the quietest end of the spectrum sit predictions that neither affect our behaviour nor are affected by it. Scientists tell us that the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our own in roughly two billion years. This is an educated estimate, grounded in precise mathematics and physics — and still, technically, a prediction, since a great deal could happen between now and then. But we will not reorganise our foreign policy around it. No government will call an emergency session. No pundit will appear on television to analyse the implications for the next election cycle. It is the one category of prediction that is genuinely free of us, and perhaps for that reason, the one we find easiest to accept.

A step closer to home are predictions that will not be changed by our behaviour, even if they change us. The weather is the classic example. We do not alter tomorrow's rain by predicting it; we only alter how we dress. The forecast does not make itself true or false — it simply describes what is coming, and we adjust accordingly. This category has limited but real application in politics: there are situations where the actions of one part of the world are simply too distant, too disconnected, to bend the outcome in another.

· · ·

The most interesting category, and the one that matters most in political life, is where prediction and behaviour fold back on each other. These are predictions that change the very thing they are predicting.

A teacher who tells a student they are likely to fail may be issuing a warning that becomes a wake-up call — the student works harder, performs better, and the prediction is proved wrong by the act of having been made. Or the same warning lands as a verdict, and the student stops trying, and the prediction fulfils itself with terrible efficiency. The prediction is not a passive observation; it is an intervention.

The mechanism is familiar from markets. When speculation about a potential war affecting oil supply begins to circulate seriously, traders do not wait for the shortage to materialise. They act on the prediction. They buy in advance. Prices rise. And so the prediction — higher oil prices — comes true not because of any actual disruption, but because enough people believed it would. The shortage was conjured into existence by the act of forecasting it.

British electoral politics offers a particularly clear version of this loop. For decades, polls consistently predicted that one of the two main parties will win any given constituency, which leads many voters to conclude that a vote for the Greens or the Liberal Democrats is a wasted vote, which leads them either to vote tactically or not to vote at all, which then confirms the poll's prediction. The forecast creates the conditions for its own accuracy. But that loop is not unbreakable. In 2024 it cracked — the Lib Dems surged, the Greens returned MPs, and Reform demonstrated that new predictions can generate new realities just as powerfully as old ones can suppress them. What is shifting now is not just the voting patterns but the underlying belief: once enough people stop treating a prediction as a fact, the prediction loses its grip. Elections may be the most honest laboratory we have for watching that process happen in real time.

 

So why do we predict at all, given that we know this is how it works?

Part of the answer is simple: impatience. We are creatures who cannot wait. Hand someone a wrapped present and watch as they before have touched the ribbon, they are already guessing. We watch a political situation unfold in real time and immediately reach for interpretation, projection, resolution. We spend hours listening to commentators analyse an evolving crisis, speculating about what will happen — and when the expected thing happens, we treat it as confirmation of our analytical powers, without pausing to ask whether the expectation itself shaped the outcome.

But we also predict because we are afraid of being surprised. The guess at the wrapped present is not only eagerness — it is armour. If I can name what is inside before I open it, the opening cannot shock me. And this fear-driven prediction is just as capable of making itself real as the optimistic kind: the candidate who believes they will lose and stops fighting, the movement that convinces itself change is impossible and stops pushing. The anxiety becomes the outcome.

Which brings us to the most honest thing one can say about why our predictions so often fail. We do not predict the future neutrally. We predict through a lens ground by the past — our experiences, our fears, our desires — and that lens bends everything. The optimist sees the conditions that favour the outcome they want; the pessimist sees only the obstacles. We say we are being analytical. We are mostly being autobiographical. And because that bias shapes which predictions we act on, it shapes which self-fulfilling loops we set in motion. The bias and the behaviour-change are not separate causes of error. One feeds the other.

When I flip a coin, I know I have a fifty-fifty chance of heads or tails. I can predict with confidence because the system is closed and the possibilities are finite. But most political coins have an infinite number of sides. Some of those sides only come into existence depending on what I do before the flip. Others emerge only from what I do after it. In a system like that — which is to say, in any system involving human beings in large numbers — prediction is not really prediction at all. It is a declaration of intent, or a confession of fear, dressed up as analysis.

We are also seduced by pattern. History does not repeat itself — but it rhymes, and we love the rhyme. The danger is not that we notice it. The danger is that we approach every new situation already looking for where it rhymes, and in doing so we miss what is genuinely new about it. The notes we cannot place are usually the ones that matter.

 

 

Ahmad baker

30.03.2026

 

PS: I originally wanted to write about this self-acclaimed professor Jiang and his predictions. instead, I found out that I wrote a long academic piece on predictions. 

 

The sky is not innocent

 The sky is innocent today — or any day.

It is the oldest lie.
The gods at rest in their unbothered light,
heaven sealed against the smell of us.

The waters rise — and rise — and rise —
rage learning to breathe,
the drowned filling the deep.
We cling to splintered wood
as though surviving were still an argument.
Salt where prayers were.
We call upward —
not with hope —
only out of habit.

The gods do not answer.
They are not troubled.
Above Gaza the sky was blue.
Above Lebanon the sky remained untouched.
Above every shore we were erased from,
the sky was immaculate.

Heaven is comfortable.
The peace up there requires the fire down here.
The calm requires the drowning.
The light requires our blood.
They watch us —
with concern carefully measured
to cost them nothing.

I will not look up again.
Not in grief.
Not in rage.
Not in the old reflex of a people
taught to beg from those who built this voyage.

I surrender

to the sea that rages without pretending.
to the wind that touches every shore.
to the birds — who know no borders in their path.

and to the wood beneath us,
patient and unjudging,
that does not ask
who deserves to float.

If there is another world
it will not descend from above.

It will rise
from the still-breathing,
the still-floating,
the ones who finally learned —

that the sky
was never
on our side.

Ahmad Baker

March 2026

Rise of Anti-semitism

Antisemitism 

During the darkest years of World War II, when Jews in Paris were hunted by the Nazis, the Grand Mosque of Paris opened its doors.

Imam Si Kaddour Benghabrit hid Jewish families in the mosque’s cellars, gave them forged Muslim identity papers, and helped many escape.

While the Gestapo searched the streets, it was a Muslim place of worship that became a sanctuary for Jews.

But that was not the first time Muslims stood with them.

When pogroms tore through the Russian Empire in the early 1900s, countless Jewish families fled westward.

In Britain, the government of Arthur Balfour – the same man later gave the “Balfour Declaration” – worked hard to keep the Jews out, pushing through the 1905 Aliens Act to restrict their entry.

While Jews were being slaughtered, Britain was closing its doors.

At that very time, the Ottoman Empire was offering them shelter, as it had done for centuries, including when Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.

And again, on the eve of the Holocaust, a ship full of desperate Jewish refugees — the MS St. Louis — fled Nazi Germany.

The United States turned it away.

Britain turned it away.

Canada turned it away.

Hundreds of those on board later perished in the camps.

But in Morocco, the Muslim Sultan Mohammed V refused to hand over Jews under his protection, famously declaring:

> “There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects.”

History remembers who opened doors and who slammed them shut.

And today, the very same voices that once stirred fear and hatred are weaponising the word antisemitism to silence anyone who stands with Palestine, anyone who dares speak against occupation, genocide and apartheid.

They are inflaming division, twisting a real and painful history of Jewish suffering into a shield for political crimes.

The cruel irony is that the far right — the ones who once waved Nazi flags in the 30s and now march under British ones — stood on a stage in London on 13 September, throwing Nazi salutes next to Israeli flags.

That is the grotesque theatre our politics has become.

Keir Starmer and those like him claim to fight antisemitism, yet by fusing Jewish identity with the actions of Israel, they are making Jews less safe, not more.

They are repeating the same cowardice that history knows too well — when moral clarity was needed, they chose alignment with power.

To my Jewish fellow citizens: 

When fascism rises again — and the signs are all around us — it will not be Starmer or his friends who stand with you or us.

It will be people like me, people like you, people who still believe in humanity, in justice, and in standing beside the oppressed.

We were there when your ancestors were hunted, and we will be there again if darkness falls.

The others — the opportunists, the flag-wavers, the merchants of fear — some will fall silent, but many will be cheering the marching crowds.

Ahmad Baker

October 2025 

my speech at the national demo for Palestine in Liverpool outside Labour conference

This week, the UK formally recognised the state of Palestine.

As a Palestinian, as a British Palestinian, to you, fellow British people, I say thank you.

But to UK government I say:

Over a hundred years of not acknowledging us — only now you do.

I need to remind you of two years of genocide— sponsored by weapons manufactured right here in the UK.

I need to remind you of over 1,600 health workers killed by Israel. I call them my colleagues.

I need to remind you of many UK health workers — targeted right here at home for our support of Palestine. They want to silence us. 

But we refuse to look away, 

We refuse to be silenced. 

We refuse to be complicit.

---

We know this "kind gesture" from Labour run government came only because of public pressure. Because of *you* — taking to the streets, challenging this government when it showed no shame. While they are complicit, preaching division. You led: Showing solidarity and unity. 

This recognition happened because you made it impossible to ignore us.

For that, I say thank you.. 

---

But this recognition — is just the beginning, not the end. 

While they finally acknowledge us Palestinians on paper, the genocide continues. The weapons still flow. 

in this century-long night, 

this is still the darkest hour in our fight.

Symbolic recognition cannot pierce through this night of terror. 

We need more than gestures.

 We need/ We DEMAND meaningful action.

Friends, 

Our presence must be felt in every space. 

We need our voice louder than thunder. 

In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians. 

Palestine must become our compass — 

guiding how we shop, 

who we vote for, 

how we measure people's ethics. 

Every choice we make, must be a choice for justice. 

---

Friends:

Speak louder. Reach deeper. Let no silence remain.

Support stronger. Boycott wider. Break every chain.

More action. More passion. More fire in our call.

More organising. More mobilising.

We must give Palestine our all.

Ahmad Baker

watch the speech

UK Recognition of Palestine:

A Step in the Right Direction, But Too Little, Far Too Late

The recognition of Palestinian statehood by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Portugal on 21 September 2025 marks a significant, if overdue, moment in global diplomacy—almost four decades after Palestine’s 1988 declaration of independence. By the end of that year (1988), around 90 states had already recognised Palestine, including the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and India to name few. Today, 151 UN member states—78% of the world—have done so, with Sweden (2014), Ireland, Norway, and Spain (2024) among the European leaders. The UK’s step highlights just how late it has arrived—something to be acknowledged with shame rather than celebrated as an achievement.

Israel’s continued occupation, U.S. opposition, the ongoing flow of international weapons, and the refusal to hold Israel accountable in arenas such as FIFA and other global organisations mean the announcement changes little on the ground. Nor does it alter the UK’s restrictive domestic environment: while support for Palestinian rights is protected under the Human Rights Act 1998, legislation such as the Terrorism Act 2000 and public order laws continue to limit activism. Recognition, then, is more symbolic than practical, aligning the government belatedly with a public consensus long visible on Britain’s streets.

And yet, symbolism matters. This recognition comes in the shadow of genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced. For Palestinians, and for all who stand with them, it is impossible to greet this decision with gratitude; it comes far too late, after far too much blood has been spilled. But it is, nonetheless, a step in the right direction. Above all, it shows that public pressure can shift governments, even reluctant ones. The lesson is not to relent, but to push harder, organise more effectively, and continue demanding justice—because change, however slow, is possible.

Ahmad Baker

why so dark?

Why So Dark

I wore my dark coat in the morning  

Put a smile, started my everyday race  

In the evening I looked at my reflection  

I was wearing my coat on my face

Did I write this? Am I this dark?  

Nothing fun or childish to celebrate  

No joy worthy of a remark  

Or warm loving moments to write about

I always write about tears and darkness  

Because everything is incomplete without sadness  

From birth we start to mourn our deaths  

Might enjoy life, but like to talk about loss

I wonder, is black as dark as we think it is  

Or what else could be darker  

White, maybe, when it is a shroud covering a loved one  

Red, sometimes, when it is blood from a rose or a gun  

Or memories, where the end is the same as they start  

With hugs, tears and kisses that won't last

Many things are as dark as black, or even darker  

But I ask myself, again, why?  

Why do I need to look for darkness  

My words sink low, even when my spirit is high  

Why my tears are plenty in my writings,  

and how rare is my laughter

So,  

I gathered all my memories,  

as I like them to be  

Organised, in order not of time,  

But by importance to me  

I saw my whole life  

Full of joy, happiness and misery  

Like all people  

Simple, straightforward, no mystery  

So why only write about despair, anguish and grief  

It's the same as happiness, nothing lasts  

All become memories, always brief.  

I am rarely sad or angry, I am content, most of the time  

But to get the words to flow and poems to rhyme  

To make my words worth reading  

I have to make the white pages bleeding  

I can only share my tears, my deep thoughts  

My bleak memories, and my dark coats.

Ahmad Baker

قراءة القرآن وقراءة التاريخ

(هذه الخاطرة منبعها فكرة طرحها د علي الوردي في الفصل ١٢ من كتابه مهزلة العقل البشري)

يقول الوردي انه وخلال دراسته في الصفوف الأساسية كانت حصة التاريخ مثيرة ومحببة للتلاميذ، وحصة القرآن ثقيلة ومملة. وهذا بسبب ان التاريخ الذي ندرسه يحكي عن الأمجاد والانتصارات فقط، حتى حين يتحدث عن الفراعنة يخبرنا عن الأهرامات وما شيدوه من حضارة، بعكس القرآن الذي يتحدث عن الضعفاء ومواجهتهم للجبابرة، وعند الحديث عن الفراعنة يشير رمزا الى ما شيدوه من آثار ويستفيض شرحا عن الظلم الذي كانوا يكيلونه للشعوب.

للأسف الشديد ان غالب اطلاعنا على التاريخ هو اطلاع على تاريخ الملوك والدول، وأفضل مثال على ذلك هو كتاب تاريخ الخلفاء للسيوطي، الذي سرد فيه تاريخ الإسلام من وفاة الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم إلى عهده (القرن الخامس عشر) وذلك من خلال تسمية الخلفاء، وسرد ما جرى في عهد كل منهم. ولكن الغائب عن هذا التاريخ هم الشعوب الذين عاصروا أولئك الخلفاء، فهؤلاء قصص جانبية وجملة او اثنتين في السيرة لذاك الخليفة، واما كيف كانت حياتهم وسخطهم وثوراتهم على حكامهم فهذا غالباً لا يذكر إلا إذا قتلت الثورة الخليفة او خلعته.

والقرآن ذكر لنا قصص الأنبياء والدعاة إلى الله، وبإستثناء الذي حآج إبراهيم ،والملك في قصة يوسف وفرعون في قصة موسى لم يك هناك ذكر للحكام ولو بالإشارة (داوود وسليمان استثناء آخر لانهم هم أهل الملك)، وانما ابطال هذه القصص هم الشعوب وانبيائهم الذين ثاروا ضد الضلال والظلم والاضطهاد والفساد.

ورغم ان غالب قصص القرآن اظهرت تعالي الظلم والظُلّام ورفضهم لقبول الحق وانكسار الحق أمام الباطل، إلا أن الدعاة والوعاظ يَرْوّنَ هذه القصص ليقولوا لنا ان النصر دائما معنا نحن أهل الحق، أهل الثورة على الضلال و الظلم. ونعلم يقينا ان هذا حدث مع عاد وثمود وأصحاب الأيكة، فقد كفروا واستبدوا وتجبروا ولم ينجح النبي ومن آمن معه بتغيير الأمور، ولذلك انزل الله عذاب الله عليهم والمعجزة الإلهية انتصرت، لا الحركة البشرية. اما إبراهيم فقد ترك بلده وهاجر، وموسى اخذ قومه وهاجر، والرجل الداعية في سورة ياسين قُتل، وهكذا دواليك. 

ولربما أكثر القصص تمثيلا لهذا المبدأ ،واقلّها حظاً من دروس الوعاظ هي قصة أصحاب الأخدود (تطرق سيد قطب لهذا في كتابه معالم على الطريق)، فهؤلاء قومٌ آمنوا بالله وثاروا على الاضطهاد والظلم، فكان عاقبة هذه الثورة هي موت كل من شارك فيها بالحرق في الأخدود. والقرآن ذكر القصة وذكر معانتهم ولم يتطرق ولو رمزا الى الطاغية الذي أمر بحرقهم (الآيات التي تلت تتحدث بالمطلق والعموم وليس خصا)، وإنما ذكرت سبب حنقهم وحقدهم على هؤلاء المؤمنين، لتدعم قضيتهم وتعيد التأكيد أنهم هم - المؤمنون الثائرون- من يستحقون الخلود في الذكرى . 

لكننا، ومما تعودنا عليه من حبنا للنهايات السعيدة نجد ان القصص تروى دائماً لتقول لنا: انتصرنا. والتاريخ يحكي فقط عن المنتصرين والفاتحين، لا عن الشعوب المقهورة التي رزخت تحت حكم ذلك المنتصر المؤيد. طبعاً هناك استثناءات في كتب التاريخ عما قلت، وهذه الاستثناءات هي القاعدة، فالكتب تزخر بالقصص والحكايا عن الخروج على الحاكم والقتل والتنكيل والبذخ للحكام مع ما كان يقابله من المجاعة والفقر المدقع الذي تحتملته الشعوب، لكننا اخترنا ان نتذكر ونذاكر ونسرد الماضي والتاريخ على أنه انتصار فلان وعدله وفتوحاته، وتجاهلنا عن قصد، او عن قصور، او عن طبيعة بشرية، تجاهلنا الشعوب التي جعلت ذلك ممكنا.

اليوم نحن، انا وانت ،هم الشعوب التي ستعيش على الهامش في صفحات التاريخ الذي يحدث اليوم، وكل ما قدمناه وحاولناه وانجزناه او ساهمنا به، ليكون الحاضر ممكنا، سيصبح في طي صفحات الماضي ولن يعرفنا أحد، بل سيذكررون هؤلاء الحكام فقط . وستكون حصص التاريخ للاحفاد في المستقبل مثيرة وممتعة حين لا تذكر شيء عنّا. 

على الهامش- من الطريف ان يلتقي علي الوردي مع سيد قطب في الخاطرة، وهما من نفس الحقبة الزمنية لكن على النقيض فكرياً.

أحمد بكر

تموز ٢٠٢٢

أدب السجون

أدب السجون

سجن صيدنايا هو حلقة من سلسلة طويلة في فنون العذاب التي برع بها نظام الأسد. لكن هو ليس الوحيد في هذا المضمار، فوطننا العربي مليء بالسحون والسجناء السياسين. 

عندما كتب عبد الرحمن منيف روايته المعروفة 

شرق المتوسط 

كان أكثر إنتقاد لها هو أنها لم تصف حقيقة العذاب والألم، بل جاءت مخففة 

Light

لذلك، وبعد سنوات عديدة كتب رواية أخرى اسماها

الأن هنا

أو شرق المتوسط مرة أخرى. 

منيف ليس الوحيد الذي كتب في آدب السجون، لكنه الأشهر. هناك أيضا القوقعة لمصطفى خليفة، و تلك العتمة الباهرة للطاهر بن جلون. وكتب كثيرة في أدب السجون. وكتب أخرى تذكرت تجربة السجن ضمن نطاق أوسع مثل مديح الكراهية، ويا صاحبي السجن. 

السجون من كثرتها صار لدينا باب في الأدب العربي اسمه أدب السجون. 

حسبي الله فيهم كلهم... 

هيه يا سجاني 

هيه يا عتمة الزنزانةِ

عتمك رايح.. ظُلمك رايح

نسمة بُكرا ما بتنساني ،،

لولا إمي تركت بعيد 

لو ما اشتقت لضيعتنا

ما كِنت وقفت بشباك الزنزانة وغنيتلها ،،

يا امي العسكر بيني وبينك 

لو طولتي بيعلى جبينك

رضعتيني العزْ

ويُما الموت يطيب وما تنهانِي

هيه هيه.. يا سجاني

أحمد بكر

كانون الأول ٢٠٢٤