It is very easy to dismiss a prophet. Nostradamus wrote in riddles vague enough to mean anything. Rasputin was, by most accounts, completely unhinged. The guy at the end of your street with the sandwich board has been predicting the end of the world every Saturday for eleven years. You learn to tune it out.
But Robert Peston is not that. He is ITV’s political editor, a man who warned about the 2008 banking collapse while politicians had their fingers in their ears. A man who looked at a mysterious new virus in Wuhan in late 2019 and told government officials it looked serious, and was right. So when he says he is anxious about what comes next, it is probably worth putting the sandwich board down and listening.
