Theresa may

It's a shame that protocol, being protocol, prevents Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson from meeting President-elect Donald Trump during his trip to Washington. Boris can't even meet Rex Tillerson, the man Trump has chosen as his Secretary of State, until Tillerson is confirmed by the senate. A Trump-Johnson encounter would be a meeting of considerable media and public interest: the Donald and the Boris have become aligned in people's minds ever since the EU referendum, when Nick Clegg and others called Johnson 'Trump with a thesaurus' and so on. It's true that Boris is, in a tabloid sense, a thinking man's Trump. The two men are born New Yorkers. They share an enthusiasm for women (in a dangerous male predator sense), as well as for entertainment and jingoism.

While getting the Tory leadership contest out of the way quickly was good for the country following the EU referendum, it did mean that Britain gained a new Prime Minister without much idea of what she believed or wanted to do with her time in office. Theresa May did set out some principles for her government when she stood on the steps of Downing Street on her first day in the job, and in her autumn conference speech, but how she plans to help the ‘just managing’ and how much she really intends to do by way of domestic reform when Brexit is such a big distraction - and potentially a convenient excuse. But as I say in the magazine this week,  the Tory leader is keen that Brexit isn't the only thing by which her premiership is judged.

It's tradition that the Prime Minister kicks off the new year by giving a broadcast interview to the Andrew Marr show. However, this year Theresa May has decided to mix things up and snub the BBC in favour of Sky News. On Sunday, May will instead be interviewed by Sophy Ridge to kickstart Ridge's new morning show: https://twitter.com/SophyRidgeSky/status/816768482188599296 This means that Marr now has to settle for Justine Greening and Nicola Sturgeon. Mr S's BBC mole says the decision has gone down 'like a cup of cold sick' with the upper echelon of the Beeb.

It is the fate of all new prime ministers to be compared with their recent predecessors. Theresa May has already been accused of being the heir to the micro-managing Gordon Brown. Her allies, meanwhile, see a new Margaret Thatcher, an uncompromising Boadicea destined to retrieve sovereignty from Europe. But perhaps a more fitting model for May would be a less recent Labour prime minister: Clement Attlee. When Labourites reminisce about Attlee, it isn’t so much the man himself who makes them misty-eyed. It is the achievements of those who worked for him — Nye Bevan, Ernest Bevin and the rest. Attlee’s government created the welfare state and the National Health Service, and built a million houses. It had lots of excuses not do any of these things.

Just a day after Sir Ivan Rogers' resignation as Britain's ambassador to the EU, his successor has been named as Sir Tim Barrow. Currently political director at the Foreign Office, Barrow is a career diplomat who is a former ambassador to Russia with significant experience of Brussels. Speaking on LBC, Rogers' old boss Charles Crawford, a former British diplomat critical of the EU, says that Barrow will be a popular choice with the Foreign Office. He adds that Barrow will be 'fearless' in putting to ministers the choices ahead: 'If you have to choose someone for this job, he is -- given where we are -- as good as it gets at the moment. He will get on with people because he's charming. But he's not soft, he's not someone who's going to dither.

Few years will live as long in the memory as 2016. Historians will ponder the meaning and consequences of the past 12 months for decades to come. In the future, 180-odd years from now, some Zhou Enlai will remark that ‘it is too soon to say’ when asked about the significance of Brexit. The referendum result shocked Westminster. Michael Gove was so sure it would be Remain that he had retreated to bed on the evening of 23 June and only found out Leave had won when one of his aides telephoned in the early hours of the morning. Theresa May admits in her interview with us that she was ‘surprised’ by the result and had been expecting a Remain vote, based on both the polls and the mood in her own constituency.

Another day, another Tudor throwback. This time, Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of acting like Henry VIII by avoiding a vote in Parliament over the triggering of Article 50. 'She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one', he told the Guardian this week. 'The idea that on something as major as this the prime minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass parliament is extraordinary – I don’t know where she’s coming from.' We’ve been here before. Our politicians are addicted to Tudor comparisons: only last August, the Labour MP Barry Gardiner accused Theresa May of seeking ‘to diminish parliament and assume the arrogant powers of a Tudor monarch.’ (Can powers be ‘arrogant’?

This week, Theresa May's sincerity was called into question when party members -- including Ed Vaizey -- received a Christmas greeting from the Prime Minister in which they were addressed by their surname. With brains at CCHQ quick to clock the problem, Alan Mabbutt -- the Director General of the Conservatives -- has sent out an apology email in which he takes the blame for the error which 'distracted from the sincerity' of May's message. Only there's another issue. This time recipients are not even addressed by their surname -- let alone their first-name. Instead, they are simply referred to as 'Dear Member': Mr S suspects Theresa May and her party have some work to do when it comes to mastering the personal touch.

We’re closing 2016 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 8: Daniel Hannan's piece from June, in which he argues why voting 'Leave' is the right decision For me, as for so many people, it’s a heart versus head issue. I’m emotionally drawn to Europe. I speak French and Spanish and have lived and worked all over the Continent. I’ve made many friends among the Brussels functionaries. Lots of them, naturally, are committed Euro-federalists. Yet they are also decent neighbours, loyal companions and generous hosts. I feel twinges of unease about disappointing them, especially the anglophiles. But, in the end, the head must rule the heart. Remainers often tell us to think of our children, and I’m doing precisely that.