The EU is killing democracy. I’m afraid that 2018 will turn VERY ugly

THIS week, Theresa May coldbloodedly sacked her deputy, Damian Green, who is her closest political confidant.

Following the embarrassing recent departures of two other Cabinet ministers — Priti Patel and Michael Fallon — it was widely said that Mr Green’s demise would terminally damage Mrs May’s Government.

Indeed, some were openly gleeful at the prospect. For example, George Osborne, the embittered former chancellor who crudely boasts that he will destroy the Prime Minister, circulated on social media a vindictive cartoon depicting Mrs May as an almost-dead duck collapsing as her political crutch (Green) was removed.

But survive she has. Indeed, I believe she looks stronger than at any time in the past 12 months. How do we explain this?

Some point out that Mr Green was not well known to the public. Yet in political terms he was a key part of Mrs May’s administration. It is fair to compare his close relationship with Mrs May to that held by Peter Mandelson in relation to Tony Blair in the early days of the New Labour government.

Back then, 19 years ago, he, too, was forced to quit the government after revelations that he had not disclosed a pivotal fact to a building society by failing to declare on a mortgage application form that he had received a huge loan from a millionaire Labour colleague.

Blair was badly damaged by the Mandelson affair. Not only did he lose a powerful political fixer but a close friend.

However, the fact that I’m convinced Mrs May will not suffer in the same way is down to the very particular type of modern politician she is.

She is her own woman. She’s not someone whose fortunes are dependent on others.

If you look at photographs of her taken over the past few weeks, you can see that, despite these ministerial departures and the fiendishly tricky Brexit negotiations, she seems relaxed.

WHATa contrast with 12 months ago. Then, she looked nervous, buttoned-up, robotic and repressed. Remember, this was a Prime Minister who repeatedly told voters there would not be a General Election in 2017 — but then called one.

This was a Prime Minister accused of being too scared to go on TV to engage in debate to defend her Government’s record.

This was a Prime Minister ridiculed for promising ‘ strong and stable’ government while delivering nothing of the sort.

Above all, this was a Prime Minister who was pounded by the electorate in June after unveiling a controversial social care programme and then dropping it a few days later after howls of protest.

Today, though, Mrs May is not merely considerably more at ease with herself; I believe she is also on her way to solving one of the central problems facing all politicians in Western democracies.

The challenge? How to narrow the ever-widening gulf between government and governed.

Very rarely in history has the political establishment been so remote from the electorate as it is today. Of course, this is deeply worrying.

We were told that the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991 would be a landmark moment in the development of modern democracies. Millions of people held under the iron fist of communist regimes were finally offered the opportunity to build new political structures based on freedom.

But that did not happen in Russia, where the gap between the plutocratic elite and the rest is wider than ever. Meanwhile, democracies elsewhere began to fail.

European politics became increasingly dominated by an elite which was contemptuous of the needs and demands of voters.

Central to this was the pythonstyle grip in which Brussels held Eu member states. Their national sovereignties were eroded in a scandalously undemocratic way. The power to decide on key aspects of everyday life — from their economies to immigration — was held by unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission, instead of by national politicians elected and held accountable by voters.

This brought politics into disrepute and resulted in a fracturing of the system that had prevailed for decades when a small number of parties tended to dominate national politics.

In Britain, the stranglehold of Labour and the Tories weakened as ukip and the Greens took a bigger share of the vote. In France, the two main parties that had controlled politics since World War II collapsed to such an extent that one had no candidate in the run-off for president this year. The Socialists were obliterated by the far-Right National Front. Significantly, the eventual winner, Emmanuel Macron, heads a party that didn’t exist two years ago.

Germany is paralysed politically, with a badly damaged Angela Merkel unable to cobble together a coalition.

Talks have been put on hold until the New Year, after discussion about a three-party coalition between her Christian Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Greens collapsed.

More worryingly, Spain is in the middle of a huge political crisis. This week’s vote, in which separatist parties won a majority in Catalonia in a major revolt against the traditional political system, heralds the country’s possible break-up.

Similarly in Greece, the two main parties have been swept away and following the country’s debt crisis, the government is little more than a puppet of the European Central Bank.

In Austria, voters this month rejected the consensus that has prevailed for years and elected a far-Right party into government in an election dominated by a bitter debate on immigration.

In the east, Hungary and the Czech Republic have vowed to defend Poland against an ‘unjust’ clampdown by Brussels chiefs who have threatened to strip the Warsaw government of voting rights after it moved to gain more control itself.

FEARSabound, too, of a growing split between liberal western Europe and its socially conservative eastern members who reject Brussels quotas for the number of migrants they must take.

The truth is that the European Commission — with its contempt for nationhood and the democratic rights of voters — has not only done immeasurable damage to the political system that has worked well since the end of World War II, but now threatens the Eu itself.

It is no wonder people are in revolt. Only one major European country has had the guts to stand up to the Brussels behemoth, and that is Britain.

How telling that since the vote to leave the Eu last year, traditional parties are back in the ascendancy. This is no coincidence. Party membership, certainly in the case of the Labour Party, has soared — admittedly on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity among the young. Support for ukip and the Lib Dems has fallen massively.

In June’s General Election, the Tories and Labour took 82 per cent of the vote.

Compare this with Germany, where the two main parties (the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) managed just 47 per cent. In Greece, the traditional parties took just 34 per cent.

The reason for this is that, more than in any other major country in Europe, there remains a strong element of political independence in Britain. We have not caved in to Brussels.

Elsewhere in the Eu, voters who feel betrayed by their politicians having sold out to Brussels are angry and, in despair, are turning to far-Right political groupings.

I predict that the situation will get worse. I fear 2018 could witness some very ugly political developments.

When they look at what is happening on the Continent, even the most rabid opponents of Brexit must surely acknowledge that the vote to leave the Eu will help protect this country from dangerous extremism.