Why are conditionally executed instructions not present in later ARM instruction sets?

Question

Naively, conditionally executed instructions seem like a great idea to me.

As I read more about ARM (and ARM-like) instruction sets (Thumb2, Unicore, AArch64) I find

Answer 1

Just like, the defer slot in mips being a trick (at the time), conditional execution in arm is a trick (at the time), as is the pc being two instructions ahead. Now down the road how much affect do they have? Will ARMs branch predictor actually make that much difference or is the real answer they needed more bits in a 32 bit instruction word and like thumb the first and easiest thing to get rid of is the condition bits.

it is not too difficult to do some performance tests to see how good or back the branch predictor really is, I tried it with unconditional branches on an arm11, granted that is an old architecture now but still in wide use. It was difficult at best to get the branch prediction to show any improvement, and in no way, shape, or form could it compete with the conditional execution. I have not repeated these experience on anything in the cortex-a family.