Theresa May should be grateful for Brexit – it's obscured her weak domestic agenda and the ongoing effects of austerity

If 2018 had seen politics as normal, Labour would probably be ahead in the opinion polls by now

This is not another column about Brexit. It is about what might otherwise have dominated the headlines if the political and media class had not been so consumed by Brexit in the past 12 months.

Although Theresa May and her ministers might wish that Brexit had not been so dominant, I doubt they would now be toasting a better year. Instead, the theme running through 2018, like the letters on a stick of rock, would have been “austerity”. With “over” and a giant question mark next to it. May’s declaration at the Conservative Party conference in October – that the age of austerity had ended – grabbed the desired headlines, but was never properly tested by the media.

The biggest non-Brexit political story was May’s announcement of an extra £20bn a year for the NHS in England by 2023. The pledge was significant, especially for a Tory government, but received less scrutiny than it merited. Six months on, ministers are still struggling to translate it into service improvements. They were unable to publish their much-trumpeted 10-year NHS plan by the end of this year, one of many casualties as Brexit left little bandwidth for much else. A long list of promises turned into “ghost” policies, as my colleague Rob Merrick revealed.

A long-awaited green paper on social care was also promised by the end of 2018 and also failed to materialise. The care crisis deserved much more media attention. It remains a dangerous “sleeper” issue that one day will rise and bite the government – as does the related issue of the impossible financial straitjacket imposed on councils.

The other aspect of the austerity debate that didn’t happen was on welfare. I think the most under-reported political story of 2018 was the devastating critique published by Philip Alston, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He criticised the “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” treatment of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people. It suited the Tories and their newspaper allies for his report to be a one-day wonder; it deserved much more.

True, there were plenty of headlines about universal credit, the Tories’ troubled flagship policy of merging six working age benefits into one. But not as many as its impact on struggling families justified.

One trend that would surely have received more attention in normal times was the rise in homelessness. It might have become a symbol of austerity. Rough sleeping is up 169 percent since 2010, including a 73 per cent increase between 2014 and 2017. Also underplayed were the first official figures on the deaths of homeless people, which have risen by a quarter in the past five years to almost 600 a year. Their average age was 44 for men and 42 for women.

This issue was brought close to home for those like me who work in parliament, by the death on 19 December of Gyula Remes, 43, who slept in the subway leading to Westminster tube station. People working in parliament have raised £10,500 for a fund set up in his memory to help the homeless.

In other news, one item might have risen to the top of the political and media agenda without Brexit. The horrific stabbings and shootings in London and other cities might have been seen as a national crisis. The murder rate in the capital this year stands at 132. Some 73 deaths involved a knife, 14 a gun and one a knife and a gun. More than a third of the victims were aged 16 to 24.

May’s allies sometimes expressed frustration that Brexit diverted her government from the central mission to tackle “burning injustice” she set on entering Downing Street. Yet despite all the trouble and divisions it caused, Brexit might have saved May from an even worse year. Her “austerity is over” claim might well have been tested to destruction. The media, understandably focused on the biggest challenge facing the UK since the Second World War, might otherwise have held May to account for a very thin domestic agenda which did little to address the problems she identified in 2016.

Jeremy Corbyn would certainly have enjoyed a better year without Brexit; when austerity shared the spotlight with it at last year’s general election, Labour’s appeal shone through. If 2018 had seen politics as normal, Labour would probably be ahead in the opinion polls by now. Corbyn was certainly more comfortable when talking about public services than Brexit. If he looked like a man who will be glad when Brexit is over, that’s because he is.

If you have had enough of Brexit, the bad news is that things can only get worse in the first three months of 2019. Whatever happens, the parliamentary timetable will be packed with Brexit measures and votes. And even if the UK leaves the EU on time in March, negotiations on a still ill-defined trade deal will then begin, and last for years. “After Brexit”, and normal politics, are still a long way off.