We are right back where we started

2017: revolts, rebellions, treachery, sackings, ‘tyranny’, poll defeats, crises... and

ACCORDING to Theresa May, 2017 has been ‘a year of progress’. In today’s traditional end of season missive, she ticks off a few personal highlights. January’s Lancaster House speech setting out her goals for Brexit. The triggering of Article 50 in March. The successful completion of the first phase of negotiations in December.

Strangely, t his retrospective misses a couple of other rather notable moments. Such as that General Election thingamajig, that saw her dreams of a mandate crumble to dust, along with her parliamentary majority. And October’s relaunch, in which she did a passable Darth Vader impression, took receipt of a P45, then stood and watched as the Tory Party conference literally fell apart around her ears. And the mini-Cabinet cull, which saw her close out the year by losing three ministers to three separate scandals in less than two months.

What almost everyone is agreed on – whether they’re drawn from the legion of prime ministerial critics or her somewhat smaller band of dedicated supporters – is that this has been a transformational 12 months in the political life of the nation. ‘Britain won’t ever be the same again,’ one Minister grimly informed me as he surveyed the landscape the weekend after polling day.

He was wrong. 2017 has indeed been a remarkable political year. ‘Where were you when you saw the exit poll?’ has become a new generation’s Kennedy moment. But the sentinels of continuity have still managed to hold the line against the Furies of change.

It might not have felt like that to Mrs May, who experienced a coll apse i n personal authority of unparalleled violence. Her ‘strong and stable’ slogan has become a cruel, self-mocking punchline. But the trajectory of her premiership remains broadly unaltered.

2017 was the year the Prime Minister got found out by the British people. But her Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues were already in on the secret. Back in April, a Minister told me: ‘She’ll fight an Election, then be gone in 18 months.’ As it turns out, that was an unduly pessimistic timeline. But the analysis underlying it was sound.

Mrs May was always destined to be a transitional Prime Minister, with her premiership essentially a delivery vehicle for Brexit. Yes, there were some who hoped her inflexible and centralising managerial style could be adapted to the demands of her office, but those hopes were rapidly extinguished. With the effect that the Election didn’t seal the Prime Minister’s fate, so much as affirm it.

There are still those who claim the slings and arrows of 2017 have so badly weakened Mrs May that the demise of her and her Government are imminent. But they are misreading the public mood in much the same way many of us misread it in June. The Prime Minister’s reputation for poise and competence have indeed been shattered. But these are being replaced by a growing–if grudging– acknowledgment of her tenacity and decency. That will not be enough to carry her through the fires of another Election campaign. But it will probably prove sufficient to allow her to complete her Brexit mission.

And Brexit is another area where – despite the turmoil and tumult of 2017 – few of the fundamentals have changed. There have been revolts, rebellions, accusations of treachery and tyranny, sackings, threats of resignation, parliamentary defeats and high-diplomatic brinkmanship. But to the anger of die-hard B rex it-bangers and Remainiacs, Britain is still on course for a pragmatic, staged withdrawal from the EU. Mrs May failed to get the parliamentary cushion she was hoping for from the Election. But the DUP – insulated from the vagaries of the politics of the mainland – provides a solid enough foundation for her to edge her strategy forward. And the perceived threat of Corbynism is proving enough to keep all but the most fanatical of her back-bench rebels in line.

Though that threat also looks as if it might have been overstated. 2017 was Jeremy Corbyn’s year. He defied his critics, dramatically exceeded electoral expectations, and robbed Theresa May of her majority. But as that year ends, the window of opportunity that opened briefly in those heady days following June 8 has closed again.

His attempt to leverage the tragedy of Grenfell Tower into a national uprising failed. His attempts to mobilise within Parliament to block the formation of a minority Conservative administration failed. His repeated assertions he is only a few months from becoming Prime Minister are starting to make him resemble the leader of a doomsday cult forced to explain to his followers why the world didn’t end on Friday.

Publicly, Corbyn’s allies still insist the Absolute Boy now stands on the threshold of power. But privately doubts are starting to be expressed about his ‘one-more-heave’ strat- egy. Former loyalists are looking at the polls, and starting to whisper ‘ maybe Jeremy has taken us as far as he can’. To the extent that Emily Thornberry, Angela Rayner and Yvette Cooper have all begun to take the first tentative steps towards positioning themselves for a future leadership contest.

POPULAR perception holds that Labour ends the year in a much stronger position politically than 12 months ago. But its fundamental problem remains the same. It is out of power, and stuck with a leader whose radicalism repels more people than it energises.

In 2018 all this could change. The ‘one more crisis’ that Ministers have been confidently predicting would finish the May premiership could finally materialise. The collapse of the Brexit negotiations, the Brexit recession or the great Brexit rebellion, might at last come to pass. Chants of ‘oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ could again ring out across the land.

But 2017 ends essentially as it began. With much of the country angry and frustrated at its Conservative ruling political class. But fearful and suspicious of the self-professed radical socialist alternative.

‘Nothing has changed!’ Theresa May insisted as she fought to stop her Election campaign careering off the rails. She couldn’t save that campaign. But she was right.