WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE B-WORD

theresa may ended 2018 as she lived it – fighting for her political life. Just two days before Parliament broke up for Christmas, the Prime Minister faced a no confidence vote among her own MPS. At 9pm (12 December) – with half the British media camped out on the green outside Westminster – the results of the three-hour vote came in: 200 in favour and 117 expressing no confidence in her leadership.

With the majority in favour, Mrs May was still PM and it was back on with the show. First thing the next day, she was in Brussels trying to persuade EU officials to make further concessions.

Mrs May’s supporters say she has handled this Brexit year from hell with dignity and super-human persistence. Her critics see her as stubborn and tin-eared.

Certainly, she has had to develop a thick skin. Having spent the early months of her leadership playing her cards close to her chest, the Prime Minister published her Chequers Plan in July, proposing a ‘principled, pragmatic and ambitious future partnership between the UK and the EU’.

It pleased no one. Ministers summoned to her country residence of Chequers were told they could call a minicab if they wished to reject the plan. Two, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis, stayed in Cabinet only long enough to have their official drivers take them home.

Chequers was openly mocked at an EU summit in Salzburg in September; a photo of Mrs May and EU Council President Donald Tusk beside a dessert tray was posted to his Instagram with the words: ‘A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.’

By the time of the Conservative conference in October, Mrs May seemed to have decided that if she didn’t laugh she’d cry. She literally danced on to the stage, a reference to the much-ridiculed jig she’d performed during a trip to Africa.

But while the public seemed to warm to this humbler PM, the sense that the

Government had lost control of Brexit was never far away.

In November, Mrs May claimed she had achieved the impossible, producing a 500-page ‘ Withdrawal Agreement’ negotiated with the EU. But celebrations were short-lived when more ministers resigned and it became clear MPS would not back the deal, forcing her to delay the formal vote to approve it. And so now it’s back to the drawing-board.

Through it all, the Prime Minister has maintained her calm exterior: infuriating some by her refusal to bend, winning admiration from others inspired by her resilience.

The one comfort Mrs May can take from the confidence vote is that rebels are now barred from mounting another leadership challenge for a year. It won’t protect her for long.

To win over wavering MPS ahead of the confidence vote, Mrs May was forced to promise she would stand down before the next election. The news was greeted with tears from loyalists but others celebrated: she will now come under pressure to go as soon as Brexit is out of the way in March.

Then again, the Prime Minister’s political obituary has been written many times before.