Amid the horrors of British politics in 2017, let's not forget we have had some chuckles

Release me from your tiny hands, 2017, and walk the colonnades of history. We shall not see your like again

Who could have known that the UK would become the sort of country whose prime minister could be toppled by that deadly combination of a TV prankster and a sore throat? (PA)

It is entirely fitting, given British politics’ ongoing resemblance to a low-rent horror movie, that after the shock should come the laughter.

Psychologists claim that the familiar phenomenon of post-fright chuckles in scary film audiences are the brain’s attempt to, yes, take back control.

To say that, yes, you had me fearing for my life for a nanosecond there, but just so you know, we all know all this is all as real as Paul Nuttall’s CV.

It is fair to say that no one saw 2016 hiding behind the door like a demonic clown. But for the wave after wave of jaw-dropping hilarity that has trailed so magnificently in its wake 2017 has almost – almost – made it all worthwhile.

So please, 2017, before you go, take me by your tiny hand and lead me down the colonnade of a year of political lols like no other.

In the years to come, an X may even come to mark the spot where, somewhere in Snowdonia National Park, the Prime Minister plunged hiking stick into earth and called forth the mirthquake.

When she appeared behind that lectern in 10 Downing Street that morning in April, we could not know then what we know now.

That the Conservative Party had already done the ground work to build a personality cult around a person with no personality.

That Theresa May would spend months saying nothing at all beyond the words “strong and stable leadership” and “coalition of chaos”, for which her reward would turn out to be leading the most unstable government in decades, in informal coalition with a clique of puritanical Northern Irish Union Jack wavers who walked out on the Good Friday Agreement.

Who could have known that, on a personal note, I would shortly be in a sports hall in Bridgend, watching Tory activists having placard waving lessons. “Up. Down. Up. Down. Not side to side.”

Then, in a park in Manchester, with Tim Farron attempting to launch the Liberal Democrat manifesto, the driver of a blue transit van would slow down and shout “Tim Farron is a tosser!”

In fact, perhaps none of this is real either. It’s all a simulation. An inside job. And what better evidence than the sudden collapse of political 7 World Trade Centre Tim Farron who, having sustained no direct impact, nevertheless disintegrated within his own geographical footprint for reasons that may never be fully understood.

Why would the leader of the country’s leading liberal party, of which the clue is in the name, be so unwilling for so long to say that no, gay sex is not a sin? Not even an angry man in Oxfordshire bellowing into his face from right in front of the TV cameras could chase this gay sex cloud away. Not even overheard offers to members of the public to smell my spaniel.

Who could have known that Paul Nuttall would tweed up himself for business in a by-election in the most EU-loathing corner of the land, which would end with him having to admit that no, he had never played professional football, did not have friends who had died at Hillsborough, but “I’ve not been caught in a paedophile gang”.

And whatever rollercoaster any of us might imagine we have been on, it is as nothing to the three-minutes-and-thirty-eight-seconds-long white-knuckle ride that was the whooshing and whooping starting salary expectations of Diane Abbott’s 10,000 new police officers, as explained to Nick Ferrari on LBC in May.

At 10am, you may recall, these 10,000 metaphysical police officers were being expected to work for £30 a year. Thirty seconds later they had had a 26,000 per cent pay rise, then there were not 10,000 but 250,000 of them – a tripling in size of the police force.

Who could have known about the war with Spain, declared by accident by Michael Howard sitting at home on his sofa on a Sunday morning?

By this point, of course, Priti Patel had already been on her unconventional Israeli summer holiday, which, for what it lacked on splashing about in the Dead Sea, gained in clandestine meetings with the Prime Minister.

It would be months before the in-flight movie options on Kenya Airways flights from Nairobi to London would be a matter of crucial public interest.

And who could have known that, the UK would become the sort of country whose prime minister could be toppled by that deadly combination of a TV prankster and a sore throat?

No narratives emerge in all this. No guidance for the future. 2017 was meant to be the year that a decent enough Prime Minister had a decent enough go at an impossible enough job, namely extricating the country from the European Union entirely against the wishes of a very, very large chunk of it.

It ends with that Prime Minister shown to be not that decent at all, and the job much much harder.

So goodbye then, 2017. Release us from your tiny hand to walk the colonnades of history. We will not see your like again, at least until the next inevitable horror show, coming at you in 2018. Will we be laughing at the end of that one? Well I for one am dreading finding out.