Source: Bigstock

Third, it’s natural to assume that what is happening today will continue to happen, and, of course, a lot of the time it does, and you can always find reasons that it should. A core Labour or Democrat vote has vanished and won’t return; alternatively, in different circumstances, this appears evidently true of the Conservative or Republican vote. You can observe this tendency in any sporting contest. If a boxer or tennis player gets on top, commentators frequently speak as if he has already won the match. In fact, we all know that things often turn round, and we have all seen a boxer behind on points knock his opponent out, or a tennis player who has lost the first two sets come back to win the match in the fifth. Nevertheless the habit of assuming that what’s happening now will continue to happen is deep-rooted, even when Reason tells us to get a grip. So in a prolonged spell of severe winter weather, it’s hard to believe that it will be spring someday. And yet we also know that change is a rule of life.

Finally, a subsidiary reason for the practice of making strong and striking pronouncements is simply conceit and the pleasure of being in the limelight. This is, of course, a temptation that any journalist finds hard to resist, any politician too.