This podcast is sponsored by Seller Plan from Berry Brothers and Rudd, collecting fine wines for future drinking.

Hello and welcome to the Spectator podcast Review of the Year. I'm Lara Prendergast. So after all the shocks of 2016, most pundits predicted

that 2017 would be a year of consolidation which would stabilise the global ship. They will all

have been deeply disappointed then by a year that has had all the twists and turns of its predecessor.

For the final Spectator podcast of the year, we're here to look back on the past 12 months

before casting a tentative look ahead to 2018. We'll be dividing the year. We're here to look back on the past 12 months before casting a tentative

look ahead to 2018. We'll be dividing the year up into three sections, the general election,

Brexit and the rest of the world. First up, it's June's election, and I'm joined now to reflect on it

by our editor, Fraser Nelson, our political correspondent Katie Balls, and Tim Shipman, the Sunday

Times' political editor,

whose latest book, Fallout, looks at Theresa May's electoral disaster.

So, Tim, when you initially conceived of this year's book, you must have perhaps initially

thought it was going to be a story of Theresa May's success.

At what point did you realise it was going to actually be a story of Tory tragedy?

Well, I think there were several

key moments. I mean, everyone obviously looks at the exit poll, but the moment for me when the wheels

properly fell off was when Theresa May said nothing had changed when she did a massive U-turn on her

care policy. And she'd gone into an election essentially thinking that she couldn't possibly lose it and that in all likelihood she was going to increase her majority.

And all the people around her felt the same way.

And they behaved like a bunch of people trying to get a mandate to do lots of things in government and completely forgot that they had a general election to win.

The funny thing is that we're always told that nothing really changes in election campaigns.

That's the received wisdom, that everybody's going through a little drama.

...