My prediction: Michael Ignatieff will have a good 2010

...at least by comparison to 2009. That might not be saying much, but it's something.

When Ignatieff fired Warren Kinsella from his war room last month, I predicted that act of good housekeeping would stop the party's free-fall in the polls, and lead to a slow but steady diminution of the gap between the Conservatives and Liberals. It's too early to call it a trend, but in the month since Kinsella was fired, that gap has closed by 0.5%, according to Nik Nanos. That's statistically insignificant -- it's less than the margin of error -- but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

That remains my prediction for 2010: with Kinsella's serial lack of judgment now removed from Ignatieff's war room to a (more) harmless position as a CTV pundit, and with grown-ups like Peter Donolo in charge of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberals will make fewer gaffes and engage in fewer Kinsella specials -- expect to see fewer roid-rage style explosions from Ignatieff like "your time is up!" and "I will mess with you until I'm done!"

I don't believe Ignatieff will completely close the gap. As the Nanos poll shows, a shockingly low 10.9% of Canadians believe he is the most trustworthy -- and, though I haven't seen the cross-tabs, I bet it's even lower among women.

So that's my prediction: a chastened but stabilized Liberal Party. Say, speaking of predictions, how did Kinsella's predictions from a year ago turn out? He made ten of them:

1. There’ll be an election...

2. The Liberal Party of Canada will win the election, because we’ve got the most impressive leader...

3. The Liberals will win the election...

4. The [Conservatives] will lose the election..

5. The economy, as I’ve suggested before, will be the answer to every political question...

6. The Conservatives iron communications discipline will continue to crack...

7. The Liberals, meanwhile, will continue to embrace communications discipline...

8. If they come up with a stinker [of a budget] they’ll be defeated in the House of Commons and at the ballot box...

9. We’re overdue for some sort of environmental calamity...

10. Warren will spend quite a bit of time in Ottawa...

Can it really be that he went zero for ten? Ouch -- especially on that last one! Following in the foosteps of that kind of prescience, Donolo can't help but improve things in 2010, can he?