The Spectator

January ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain,’ Theresa May, the Prime Minister, declared in a speech at Lancaster House. Britain would leave the single market and customs union on leaving the European Union, she said. The Supreme Court ruled that only by an Act of Parliament could Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty trigger Britain’s departure. Mrs May held the hand of President Donald Trump as they walked down a declivity at the White House; she asked him to make a state visit in 2017, but it was not to be. Mr Trump suspended entry to America for people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. A man shot dead 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub.

Slipping behind Some things which were supposed to happen in 2017: — Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. In 2007 Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF, said that in 2017 we would be able to cook our Christmas turkeys from electricity generated by the plant. Anyone relying on his promise will have had cold turkey. The latest estimate for completion is 2027. — Universal Credit. When introduced in 2013, it was intended that the roll-out would be complete by 2017. That has slipped back to 2022, and is in some doubt altogether. — Electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking line. Due to be completed in 2017 as part of a Department for Transport scheme announced in 2012. Won’t now be open until spring 2018.

We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4: Madeleine Kearns on her time at New York University: As a child in Glasgow, I learned that sticks and stones might break my bones but words didn’t really hurt. I’m now at New York University studying journalism, where a different mantra seems to apply. Words, it turns out, might cause life-ruining emotional trauma. During my ‘Welcome Week’, for example, I was presented with a choice of badges indicating my preferred gender pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘ze’? The student in front of me, an Australian, found this hilarious: ‘Last time I checked, I was a girl.’ Her joke was met with stony silence.

Festive waste: How much do we throw away over the Christmas period? — 1 billion Christmas cards. — 83 sq km of wrapping paper (enough to plaster the whole of Brighton and Hove with festive greetings). — 125,000 tonnes plastic packaging. — Six million Christmas trees (as many as there are trees in Epping Forest and all London’s parks put together). — 4200 tonnes of aluminium foil, enough to manufacture 14 Boeing 747s.

Christmas splurge How much extra do households spend at Christmas? — £500, according to the Bank of England. Over the course of December our spending on food increases by 10%, alcoholic drinks by 20% and books 35%. — £645, according to OnePoll (2016), including £117 spent on a partner’s gift. — £796, according to YouGov (2015), including £159 on food and drink and £596 on gifts.

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John McDonnell looks exhausted, slumped in his parliamentary office chair. Nobody said the revolution would be easy. Do he and Jeremy Corbyn have any catchphrases, I ask, to gee themselves up when battered by the right-wing press, the pundits or the moderates in their own party? ‘This will send the Daily Mail wild, OK,’ he says. ‘It’s Gramsci: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” ‘No matter how bad it gets, determination is what you need. We’re doing something we’ve been working for for 30, 40 years of our lives. And this opportunity has come. We didn’t expect it. But now it’s come we’re making the most of it.

At first sight, the evidence presented in David Anderson’s report into the four terror attacks committed between March and June sounds damning. The security service, MI5, had had three of the six attackers on its radar. The Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people, had come to the attention of MI5 in 2014. As recently as the beginning of this year, he had been implicated in criminal activity, which MI5 officers now admit might have led to his attack being thwarted had it been investigated. Khuram Butt, one of the attackers at London Bridge, had been under investigation for two years, yet still he and his two accomplices were allowed the space to plot and carry out their attack, in which they murdered eight people.