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This was the year the entire Theresa May cosmos pirouetted in space, and 2019 will be even wilder

Two years ago, the PM stood on an aircraft carrier promising a red, white and blue Brexit. In 2018, she couldn’t even pretend to be happy about it

Tom Peck
Political Sketch Writer
Monday 24 December 2018 13:52 GMT
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Theresa May responds after Jeremy Corbyn accused of calling PM a 'stupid woman'

Anyone thinking of making “2018: The Movie” would be well advised to begin their research with Nicolas Pesce’s cult horror flick, The Eyes of My Mother. Who of us in the last 12 months can honestly say we haven’t wished for the life of a murdering door-to-door salesman whose eyes and vocal cords are cut out and stored in a fridge freezer, before being tortured to death in a barn over several decades?

And though this will, I predict with vague confidence, be the first year in five which has not been horrifically disfigured by some dreadful referendum or mad general election, there was still the necessary plot twist to allow our heroine to reach her resolution.

The premiership of Theresa May has for some time been best understood as an intricate solar system whose fundamental gravity has been annihilated by the passing of a Brexit meteor a million times the size of it. The return of grammar schools, the dementia tax, whether or not to have a general election – these are planets that have orbited in one direction then suddenly switched back in the other.

But it was outside 10 Downing Street, late at night, on 14 November that the whole May universe suddenly collapsed in on itself.

That was when, at the end of a five-hour cabinet meeting that had finally approved her Brexit deal (though her Brexit secretary and various others would resign the next morning), she said the words: “When you strip away the detail, the choice before us is clear, this deal … or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all.”

This was the moment that not only was no deal no longer better than a bad deal. It was also the moment Brexit didn’t actually mean Brexit.

This was the moment Brexit saw dead people. It was the moment Brexit kicked off its crutches and the police officers jaws hit the floor as they stared at a quick-cut montage of brand names on a whiteboard. It might even come to be the moment Brexit, like Keyser Söze, just disappeared altogether.

As for Act Two, the conflict stage, no prime minister in history, and in all likelihood ever again, has fought such a brutal personal war on two fronts. Torn apart by her own party in London, then set on fire in Europe, then returning to be torn apart again, a cycle that has sped up as the climactic moment approaches.

In Salzburg, Donald Tusk rinsed her on Instagram. In London, the letters of no confidence came and went then finally came, her party ultimately deciding to strip her of all authority but keep her in office. Government by cadaver.

Two years ago, she stood on the decks of an aircraft carrier talking about a “red, white and blue Brexit”. In Brussels in November, her deal finally over the line, she was asked at a press conference if she was happy about it, and she couldn’t say yes.

There were various MacGuffins along the way. Who can forget the full week of burqa rows, which reached their dramatic high point when the MP Andrew Bridgen appeared on Sky News to say he was scared of people in motor cycle helmets.

There was the long, hot summer of antisemitism. Wreaths were laid. People were present but not involved. There was a quite stunning Daily Mail graphic, documenting Jeremy Corbyn’s movements around a graveyard several years ago, as if it were straight from CSI: Miami. There was an actual protest on Parliament Square, by Jewish people, against the Labour Party. Quite an achievement, that.

There was a glorious late boost in business for lip readers, as Theresa May accused Jean-Claude Juncker of calling her “nebulous”. He replied: “No I didn’t.” Which is an unfortunate answer when the night before you’ve given a press conference and called her precisely that.

And though it came late, there was stupid woman/stupid people-gate, which if nothing else, was a cathedral-sized window in to the fully fledged neurosis that grips, if not our entire nation, then certainly our politics and our media.

Anyone who saw Matt Hancock and various other MPs crowding around the speakers chair like deranged and violent Sunday league footballers, their mobile phones held under his nose, insisting he watch silent footage of Jeremy Corbyn mouthing an insult under his breath, saw a world gone fully mad, and in urgent need of rescue.

All of which brings us on to next year. In her Christmas message, the Queen is going to ask the country to come together in 2019.

It’s just that, as things currently stand, 2019 will be the moment the actual consequences of what we’ve done over the last two years will come to hit us. We are not even at the divisive stage yet. Best of luck everyone.

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