THE AGE OF INSECURITY BY NICK ROBINSON

It’s not just the Battle of Brexit. From robots stealing jobs, to mob rule online – and even what it means to be a man or woman, 2018 will be a year of instability and uncertainty. And the truly troubling part? Our so-called leaders have never been more i

GOOD riddance. I, for one, am not sorry to see the back of a year when we have seen and heard far too much hatred, anger and intolerance. Too many of my memories of 2017 are of mornings on which I’ve had to break news of death and of horror.

I recall reaching for my phone to turn off my 3.30am alarm and learning that my home city of Manchester had been targeted by a man who believed that blowing up young girls going to a pop concert would make him a martyr; running towards Westminster Bridge after the terror attack and meeting a party of French schoolchildren, some sobbing, others too shocked to speak; watching the first pictures of a fire consuming a tower block and realising that this was a tragedy that would define a nation.

Too many of the days when tragedy has not struck have been spent trying to explain and translate a national conversation which all too often has been reduced to a three-letter word – OMG, LOL or WTF – which captures the shock, laughter or outrage which produce likes and shares on social media.

I remember a year, too, in which people decided to stop listening and to start shouting instead. The mob which now gathers on the digital street corner is fuelled by gossip not facts; emotion rather than analysis and prejudice in place of knowledge. Here’s hoping that in 2018, we can do better. Much better. For that to be more than a vain hope, we all to need to take a lie down on the psychiatrist’s couch and undergo a bit of analysis to work out where all our rage is coming from.

We feel let down, don’t we? The oft repeated promises of peace and prosperity have collapsed, along with the banks. We feel less safe than we did and, damn it, poorer too. All in it together? Don’t make me laugh. Oh yes, and we feel powerless to do much about it.

No wonder ‘take back control’ was the most potent political slogan of my lifetime. All of us – Leavers and Remainers alike – have a sense that our lives are being shaped by forces beyond us, whether it’s the builders of the European superstate or those who spent decades denigrating Europe and plotting to escape from its clutches, the Tory press or the liberal mainstream media, the bankers, the elite, the establishment, Trump, Putin, those global tax evading corporations… Delete where applicable.

Whatever else 2018 brings, it will be a reminder of this fact – that change is daily rendering the powerful impotent and making fools of us all. Globalisation has ripped down the barriers to communication, trade and travel. Technology has put more power and information into one person’s hands than that held by governments and corporations just a decade ago.

Social attitudes are changing not just the roles of men and women but the very definition of what is a man or a woman. Much of this change has liberated millions from misery, poverty and oppression. Very little of it is, though, within the grasp of those who are theoretically ‘in power’. Take migration, and the flood of humanity that now seems perpetually on the move.

A new forecast suggests that the number of migrants attempting to settle in Europe each year could treble by the end of the century based on current climate trends alone. It is against this backdrop that in 2018 we will have to debate the design of our new post-Brexit immigration system.

The principles won’t be hard for most to agree to – an end to freedom of movement, open borders for those with the skills we need and new curbs on those with low skills.

The questions will begin when we must ask what we mean by low skilled – does it include the barista who knows how you like your morning coffee or the waitress in your local pizza place, or what about the carers who look after your mum and dad?

It will all be so much more complex and so much more important than the divisive and often preposterous row about the colour of our passports. This will also be the year we must consider how to protect ourselves from the anarchy which can be generated online, whether it is hostile states like Russia attempting to promote discord or thoughtless fools like the singer Olly Murs who sent hundreds running for their lives down London’s main shopping street to escape a shooting that had never happened.

Or the speculators who turned Bitcoin – a virtual currency underwritten by nobody – into a craze which is run from computer systems that use more electricity than countries the size of Ireland.

In the United States, there are powerful voices demanding that the giants of Silicon Valley face new taxes and regulation and, indeed, be broken up by the state.

As we debate what to do about the technological power we already know about, we will have to confront questions about the power which we can scarcely begin to imagine.

On a trip to Silicon valley this year I saw how AI – Artificial Intelligence – has the potential to automate and sweep away millions of jobs, from lorry drivers to radiologists and from bricklayers to bankers.

In California, they have begun to consider the ethics of AI. How many deaths on the road are acceptable if computerised, as against human, drivers are to blame? Would it be morally better or worse for government to deal with this dramatic change by paying everyone a flat rate minimum income whether they are unemployed, underemployed or in work? It is a debate that has scarcely begun here.

As we ask these questions, we will have to learn to accept that the reason why so many of today’s politicians look like pygmies is that they are no more in control of events than you are.

If you don’t believe me, go and ask those who once led us and who, like victims of a roadside mugging, are still wondering what on earth just happened. Ask Dave, George and Nick, the men who used to run the country. Ask the men who stood on the brink of running it – the two Eds. Ask Alex – who once looked like master of all he surveyed in Scotland.

They now find themselves being paid for speeches to obscure American universities, writing editorials or hosting podcasts about decisions they used to take. They have gone from discussing this country’s destiny on television to dancing under the glitterball and, in the case of Alex, hosting a talk show on an obscure Russian propaganda network.

And if that doesn’t convince you, just ask Theresa May. Remember how she looked at the start of 2017. She had an ‘unassailable’ 20-point lead in the polls and an opportunity ‘not to be missed’ to consign socialism to the political graveyard.

The Prime Minister was sitting on a secure parliamentary majority and had a plan to transform Britain. She was surrounded in No10 by close advisers she’d known and grown to trust over many years. Now look. The popularity has vanished, the majority gone and those advisers she relied on have all been ‘asked to resign’ along with three Cabinet Ministers.

After a year like we’ve just had

The digital mob is fuelled by emotion, not analysis Theresa May may be better suited to 2018’s new challenges

and the years that preceded it, only a fool would confidently forecast what 2018 heralds for the Prime Minister.

I will, though, say this. The Polish translator who accidentally dubbed her Madam Brexit had it right. Whether she lives or dies politically will depend on those negotiations.

Theresa May must now negotiate something far more complex than the agreement reached at the end of last year. Before she can do so, she must tell the EU and her own country what Brexit really means – that it will inevitably involve tradeoffs between the business, the livelihoods and the jobs of different regions, professions, trades and businesses...

Negotiators mostly identify and protect the sectors in which they have what economists call a comparative advantage – the things their country does better, cheaper and more efficiently. Thus, most economists would advise Britain’s negotiators to protect the financial services.

However, while fighting for bankers makes economic sense, it won’t make political sense to a Prime Minister who assures us she has heard the cries for help from ordinary working people.

This, then, will be a year in which Theresa May might have to choose between fighting for bankers or farmers, widget manufacturer or hightech entrepreneurs, between improving living standards and cutting immigration.

This – one very senior official told me – will be less a free trade agreement and more of a de-trade one. His point was that the purpose of the agreement is to erect new barriers not remove old ones. The question no one has yet addressed is: who should lose out? We cannot have our cake and eat it.

Theresa May may prove to be as well suited to this year’s task as she was ill-fitted to the one she set herself in 2017. She is a much better negotiator than she is a campaigner. She prefers the precisely drafted speech to the off-the-cuff soundbite. She would rather say nothing than allow a loose phrase to pass her lips. She has proved to be patient and stubborn, while retaining the trust of those she’s dealing with.

For all that, though, she can neither determine what deal she will get nor control her own fate. She and her team are negotiating not just with one other party – the EU and its parliament – but with 27 other countries and, in some cases, their regional representatives, the French-speaking Walloons of Belgium, for example.

Get no deal or a poor one and Theresa May’s time at No10 will be at an end. She might face defeat in Parliament and a leadership challenge from within her party, although a mixture of Tory fear of Corbyn and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act make an Election unlikely. What, though, if May secures a half-decent deal? Then it will be Corbyn who will, once again, face the difficult questions.

In 2017, he continued to make a fool of all those who predicted his demise, inspiring his supporters, reassuring the doubters. However, this year there will be no Glastonbury (it’s taking a year off, of course) so no opportunity for 100,000 people to chant ‘Ooh, Jeremy Corbyn’. There will be no Election like the one that allowed him to avoid the subject he least likes to address – Brexit.

The Labour leader has learned from his predecessor Harold Wilson: the best European policy for a divided opposition party – between those who want to stay in and those desperate to get out of Europe – is to attack Tory divisions and keep the rest of the country guessing.

If he can defeat Theresa May’s Brexit deal and continue to hold his own Leavers and Remainers together (with, say, a promise to pause Brexit, then renegotiate) he might well become Prime Minister. He won’t get the job, however, by simply waiting for the Tories to fail. It is not enough to be the Elton John of British politics, always taking to the road and sticking with the old tunes he knows the crowds just love.

Those who crave stability, security and certainty will not find it in 2018. Perhaps we will distract ourselves by discussing Meghan and Harry, ‘that’ dress or the ring, or who Southgate should put up front for the World Cup in Russia.

But whether we like it or not, this is clear: we all have a oncein-a-generation opportunity to take part in debates about how to re-shape the institutions, the laws and the policies which shape all of our lives.

Let’s hope we can learn to do so while accepting that not everyone thinks like we do, that they – the people you don’t agree with – are not infidels, traitors or mutineers. They are not stupid, racist and prejudiced. They don’t deserve to be crushed or silenced, let alone, God help us, hanged, raped or burned for the terrible crime of not sharing your views and daring to speak up for their own.

The decisions we face as a nation in 2018 will be best taken by listening to, respecting and learning from those who don’t share our views, rather than maligning their motives and calling them names.

To help do that is my New Year’s Resolution.

Corbyn made a fool of those who predicted his demise