The Alternative Year: Behind the facade, the reality of Conservative government is finally laid bare with smoke and mirrors dismissed

It seems each year in recent times seems keen to outdo the last for crises and calamity. It is a long few years now that progressives have been looking for the tide to change, for a chance to get Britain moving forward again.

Looking back over 2018, our focus was on laying bare the reality of a living under a Conservative government - and how the realities of that are finally becoming visible, released by time, escaping from behind excuses and scapegoats.

Here is our rundown of 2018 in British politics as we saw it and wrote it - and as we see it informing us for the new year ahead.

Ten Years of Conservative Government

The year 2018 marked ten years of Conservatives in government and what that really means is becoming all too clear. Hiding behind the fallout of the Financial Crisis of 2008 that happened on Labour's watch, the Tories always had a handy excuse to deflect criticism.

But it has been a full decade now - and for many, it will be marked as a lost decade. Child poverty and working poverty have risen, hand in hand. Homelessness and indebtedness have risen. Padding out employment statistics has been prioritised over wellbeing, as pay stagnates and precarity rises.

Furthermore, the privatisation and outsourcing drive is being exposed. Plush contracts handed out to private sector profiteers have done little for services, while greedy executives extract public wealth - even as the companies themselves fall apart in a poorly run shambles.

The structure of our services, both public and private, has been allowed to crumble to enrich some few well-connected individuals. The few who profit from hastily assembled companies acting as little more than a front to funnel profit - even as the work is done by largely the same people who have always done the work - before being left to crumble.

Smoke and Mirrors

What the crumbling reality of Britain under the Tories is showing us - beyond the poor state of things under their method and ideology - is how much effort is dedicated to surface phenomena. To keeping up a veneer, rather than dealing with the real, underlying issues.

The 'Northern Powerhouse' is one such issue. Funding shortfalls, cancelled upgrades, rail timetable chaos, entire rail franchises in chaos. The Conservatives time and again put their faith in an empty branding exercise - brands like the 'Northern Powerhouse', and the 'Midlands Engine'.

Empty words. Housing had faced the same trouble. Slogans like 'Right-To-Buy' and 'Help-to-Buy' are a temporary fix, meant to rally someone else to invest so the Tory government doesn't have to - temporary measures that often make things worse in the long run. Look at local government.

From the devolution to regional mayors, to housing policies, to social care, local government has been cut out of the loop and ended up with less funding, even as it has felt greater weight dropped on to it's shoulders - more burdens, more less power and money with which to act.

Too Much Fiction, Not Enough Fact

The Conservatives have hidden so much of this beyond a wall fact-less, and often tactless, political debates. Being well informed is crucial to making good decisions, but the media make that so much harder every day - itself embattled and feeling political and competitive pressures.

So we took to debunking a few of the best laid myths.

We looked at the far right, it's rise and how it has been pinned to the working class - of claimed to be some great movement of the people. The reality is exposed as the far right being a nearly exclusive middle class ideology - one rooted in the fear of the loss of privilege.

This was as true for Brexit as it was for Trump.

Whether those voting for Brexit could see what the future outside the EU would hold or not, you can see this privilege in what a hard Brexit would mean. We laid out the reality of 'WTO terms' as accelerating, not ending, the decline of UK sovereignty at the hands of globalism - for which the WTO was founded to be the point of the spear.

The poorest haven't been given share-enough of the spoils of globalisation and Brexit isn't going to change that. Nor, really will Remaining - not by itself. Without a radical will to reform, all we have in either scenario stagnation and inequality. But while Europe provides framework to try and build something better, Brexit strands us.

Looking forwards

There were hopeful sparks too, in 2018. As hard as that is to believe. The #MeToo movement, the Women's March, and other events, occuring so close to together have the makings of a pivotal historical moment - an expression of women's power, both resistence and progress.

Wars, cold and hot, that have been fought for decades also saw an interruption for peace. Historic cooperation in Korea, a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Basque paramilitary group ETA finally dissolved, Greece and North Macedonia settled a naming dispute.

These events represent a cropped image of 2018. But what they also represent are slow burning, long negotiated, discussions finally bearing fruit. Hate produces only a brief flash. Rash action, the product of rash thought, puts down no roots. Hate only lasts if we embrace it.

The fight for justice and peace puts down deep roots. Even in a world on fire, there comes a fresh flowering. The New Year will bring opportunities to get back to looking after the common good. The first step towards that isn't a big one. All you need to do is care and get informed.

Election 2018? May government has backed itself into a corner again and again, only to slip away to fight another day

Will there be an election this year? That's the big question on the tongues of everyone interested in British politics right now.

Theresa May's big effort to bring together her party - to bring it into line with the 'Brexit mandate' she claimed and coopted for herself - with a plan for Brexit backfired spectacularly. There have been big profile resignations, rumour of a leadership challenge and a divisions are now as wide as they have ever been.

For their part, Labour are raring to go. They're ahead in the polls and full of the belief that their poll lead will only be the starting position for another election campaign that will gather steam and see another surge.

However. Theresa May has so far managed to steer her government through one crisis after another - into and out of one corner after another - and cling to power. Even as each time pundits say a leadership challenge is brewing, and perhaps an election is not far away.

In fact, this government has lasted far longer than expected and predicted, considering it's disastrous election campaign, it's weakness, it's divisions, it's lack of a majority. But clinging on in that state surely cannot last.

There have been other minority governments that have limped along like this. John Major's minority government, as Tory seats were whittled away in by-elections and defections, lasted just four months. With a series of pacts with other parties, the Callaghan minority government kept going for two years, but lost heavily when it finally reached an election.

Theresa May again faces divisions that seem insurmountable - her Brexit white paper having exposed, rather than resealed, the cracks. Tory Brexiters are unhappy and so are the Tory Remainers, with one wing preparing to challenge May's leadership and the other starting to call for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.

But the May govt still has, for the moment, it's deal with the DUP intact. And she has another thing on her side. For a year, May has survived by defusing crises with dsitractions, often simply waiting it out until everyone gets bored and moves on, and with a sheer stubborn refusal to accept the reality of her government's weak position.

Yet it is that weak position itself that may very well be what helps her fend off the threat of an election. The Tories see the polls and know that Labour is so close to taking power - and the one thing the Tories can unite on is not letting Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell into No.10 and No.11 Downing Street. And their internal squabbles are making their dread outcome a realistic prospect.

What weighs in favour of the Tories is that there can be a change of Prime Minister, even of the government, without an election. It is a fact that the Tories will lean upon heavily in the coming months, if a leadership challenge emerges. They will be eager let everyone know that a new leader is to ensure continuity, rather than to change direction, to minimise claims that an election must surely follow.

The reality facing progressives is that, even as weak as the May government is, it's fate is still in the hands of the Conservatives themselves. With a defiant vote by Tory rebels to force an election unlikely, it will take a sustained swell of public pressure to force the Tories into a premature election.

Corbyn and McDonnell are victims of their own success. They have gotten Labour so close, and leading in the polls, that whatever else the government does, it knows it can't risk an election. The weakened government can do nothing but limp on.

Last year, May let Brexit overshadow much bigger priorities - that can't continue in 2018

Theresa May's government scraped through 2017. After so very nearly sinking themselves with an unnecessary and opportunistic election, the May Ministry survived a number of crises and scandals to make it into 2018.

However, all of that minority government firefighting leaves little time for governing - and what little time the May government had was gobbled up by Brexit. In 2018, it seems likely that this pattern will continue and Brexit will deny sorely needed attention to far more pressing matters.

The government made it clear this was how things would be when they announced their unambitious Queens Speech, with their pledges now just watered down versions of their manifesto and spread thin over two years - so the government could focus on Brexit.

Even those pledges that did survive have made little progress.

The proposed Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill has yet to make it's appearance - while a few elements are cropping up in other bills, like issues affecting tenancy. The draft Tenant Fees Bill was only published in November, with the Committee of Communities and Local Government still gathering evidence.

Both of these will have to wait until 2018 is well underway before they see action and - the Tenant Fees Bill in particular - is going to be a hit with a lot of lobbying before it reaches its final form. It already largely conforms to present market standards that align far more landlords interests than tenants.

Promises on electric cars made it into the cutdown Queen's Speech, but only translated into £500m for charging points in the budget. A High Speed 2 rail pledge followed on the heels of an announcement to cut rail works plans for Wales and the North. Electrification estimates tripled in cost from £900mn to £2.8bn, so were pushed back, and are now cancelled. They were not offset by the less than £2bn in the budget to be split between the transport budgets of six city regions.

Repeated promises of action on homebuilding have born little fruit. The budget offered little but work arounds and tweaks, all attempts to nudge the housing sector rather than take action. It's unlikely anyone will be holding their breath that this will change in 2018.

Even the government's deeply prioritised Brexit made slow progress.

Negotiations were a tortuous embarrassment, with the government talking itself in circles of redlines - that could do nothing to change the fact that, despite having ruled out accepting the EU's position, they had little option other than to accept it.

And was only the preliminaries, getting the UK government to honour its word and its commitments. Concerns will be high as the UK government moves into the next phase, which includes trying to push through the Brexit Bills - domestic elements of the exit process.

Concern is rooted in the unending determination of the government to limit oversight and transparency in everything they do. May's team particularly want a free hand to negotiate future trade deals, awakening fears of shady deals with human rights abusers that undercut basic standards of workers' rights and quality of goods.

Fears have not been assuaged by the obvious lack of planning. Are there impact studies, or not? The government has gone out of their way to avoid reassuring anyone with any kind of data or fact.

One of the few part of the government's plans for post-Brexit to have been discussed was for agriculture post-Brexit - previewed over the Christmas-New Year week by Michael Gove. He made a pledge of funds to incentivise environmentally friendly land management, but concerns remain over trade deals undermining farmers.

The Tories made a huge mistake becoming embroiled in Brexit and Theresa May doubled down on it. Now, important domestic matters have been deprioritised. A second consecutive winter of the NHS in crisis should be considered an omen of what to expect in public services in the year ahead.

While the Tories have been playing at being 'statesmen', pouring their attention into Brexit - a policy that is epochal for all the wrong reasons - they have let domestic matters slide into chaos.

The NHS is cash starved and stretched beyond capacity and the best that the government was able to say was that the tens of thousands of cancelled operations 'were all part of the plan'. What kind of planning is that? Why would that be reassuring?

It is worth remembering that while Churchill led Britain through the war and the Tories held the outward-looking Great Offices of State, they lost the election held at the war's end. They were beaten by Clement Atlee and Labour, who had busied themselves on the Home Front - in the Home Affairs Ministry, with Agriculture and Fisheries, Education, Fuel, Labour, Pensions and the Board of Trade.

It is a dangerous move for any government to get caught playing statesman and forget to tend to the mundane matters of governing.

Housing, healthcare, welfare. All of these matters need determined attention in 2018 - and all of them are intricately entwined with rights, conditions and pay in the workplace. Domestically, Britain has become an anxious and precarious place under the Tories' idle supervision. How much longer can a blind eye be tolerated?