In recent years, beleaguered British centrists have sought comfort in podcasts. Podcasts like The Rest Is Politics and The News Agents have been making sense of a confusing and disturbing world, with the former promising “an insider’s view on politics at home and abroad” and the latter pledging to “not just … tell you what’s happening, but why”.

These analytical podcasts have been enormously successful. Sure, some of us don’t like them — this author included — but a lot of people do. The News Agents has topped the UK podcast charts. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart of The Rest Is Politics have had stadium shows. 

Alas, in mere weeks Campbell and Stewart have gone from the O2 to the abyss.

The hosts of these podcasts have not been reliable guides to the US presidential election. Before the election, Mr Campbell insisted that Trump supporters like Elon Musk were “getting more and more desperate as reality bites … Trump is losing”. 

Rory Stewart went further. Not only would Harris win, he suggested, but it would not even be close. Journalists who thought that it would be competitive, for Stewart, were just indulging their “appetite for suspense”.

The “News Agents”, as far as I know, did not make such bold predictions, but watching their pre-election podcast remains inadvertently comic. Harris, they nodded, had the better ground game. Why, she even had an app! What a difference that turned out to make. 

A lot of the comedy is in seeing opinion commentators act like objective, non-partisan journalists. Hey, there’s nothing with opinion commentators (I’m one of them!). But there’s a difference. “News Agent” Emily Maitlis — who had claimed that the electoral race had “exploded” when Taylor Swift had endorsed Kamala Harris — got so worked up on election night that she swore on live TV and took to her Twitter account, @maitlis, to link to a story about herself with the tweet “US election result viewers praise Emily Maitlis for eviscerating Boris Johnson”. Thanks for keeping us up with the Emily Maitlis news, Emily Maitlis!

Rory Stewart admitted to being wrong — sort of. In a live Rest Is Politics broadcast, he said:

I think I was wrong because I’m an optimist and I hate the idea of being right pessimistically. I think you can be a false prophet and align yourself with the worst instincts of humanity, you can assume that everything is going to Hell in a handcart, or you can hope. And my vote on Kamala Harris was a bet on the American people, it was a bet on liberal democracy, it was a bet against populism and it was a bet on hope.

In an interview with Hugo Rifkind for Times Radio, Stewart admitted to “wishful thinking” and said, “I would rather be wrong optimistically … than be right pessimistically.”

Of course, there’s a limit to which I can blame Mr Stewart for his wishful thinking. We all have wishful thinking. The man who claims to be above biases is deluded or a liar. But there is something very wrong with Stewart trying to frame his wishful thinking as a virtue. 

There is some muddled language here that takes unpicking. Yes, hope is good. Yes, it is bad to assume that the worst will happen. But there is a difference between hoping or assuming and predicting. I can hope that I will write a book that sells 1,000,000 copies without predicting that it is the likeliest of outcomes.

To base a prediction on hopes, and to be proud of doing so, is to embrace irrationality. It goes beyond the realms of opinion commentary and enters the realms of daydreaming. Given that Mr Stewart presented his optimism as being based on rational political grounds pre-election (Biden’s “solid” governance, the female vote et cetera) and not optimism about human nature, he’s also made himself vulnerable to charges of misleading his audience. In fairness, I assume that despite his garbled language, his “wishful thinking” was unconscious and he is attempting to ennoble it after the fact.

Still, it does raise the question of why anyone should listen to him. “Wishful thinking” might be healthy in someone with a terminal illness. It seems far more unfortunate in someone that hundreds of thousands of people take seriously as a commentator and prognosticator on matters of fact.

I think Mr Stewart will retract these sentiments, as it happens. He is too intelligent to commit to them. Still, it shows how powerful “wishful thinking” has been in his commentary — and I think that it has been powerful in his listeners’ minds as well. Podcasts like The Rest Is Politics and The News Agents indulge their desire to believe that managerial liberalism will prevail amid “populist” nonsense — that the firm good sense and basic decency of soft-left centrism will prevail once the Stewarts, Campbells and Maitlises have talked it into shape. The irony is that these are the same people who are liable to think that “populists” are fuelled by nothing more than cheap emotions and easy answers.

Of course, if you find these podcasts entertaining, or like their perspective, by all means listen to them. Who am I to police people’s media consumption? But the air of authoritativeness should be dispelled. We are all just loudmouths with our prejudices, and our hopes, and our arguments aspiring to truths.