The Prime Minister was magnificent in her battle

LATER this month a film is to be released on William Shakespeare starring Kenneth Branagh called All Is True.

Coming to cinemas on 21 December, the day after MPs are supposed to start their winter recess, it seems like an appropriate full stop on a political year that if the Bard were alive now would have provided him with enough material for a trilogy of masterpieces.

As Theresa May yesterday faced an attempt to knife her by rebels she may have been reflecting on the fate of Julius Caesar.

She may have been musing over those lines of Hamlet “who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes”.

The only real question is whether a play about the Prime Minister would be classed as history or tragedy.

The unkind might suggest it is a comedy, although nobody is laughing.

But with Mrs May set to see off the bid to politically assassinate her it is worth saying that on this Parliamentary stage she is the hero of her story.

The Prime Minister has held a fractious party together, valiantly ploughed on with Brexit negotiations, ignored “the slings and arrows”, done her duty and maintained her dignity throughout.

As she said: “I have devoted myself unsparingly to this task.”

And of this current generation this newspaper can think of no alternative Conservative leader who could succeed where she has failed as things stand now.

Added to that there is now no time to replace her before leaving the EU.

This does not mean that mistakes have not been made or that Mrs May’s deal will or should be passed – and that was reflected in the fact that 117 of the 317 Tory MPs voted against her.

This was a damaging figure because it represents the vast majority of her backbenchers.

Nevertheless, she has won her victory for now and deserves the chance to finish what she started and get on with delivering Brexit.

Meanwhile, the Conservative party needs to get behind her in finishing the job and then start the process of healing its own divides for the good of the nation.

The danger of a broken Conservative Party is that it opens the door to Downing Street for Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-Left allies.