Donald Clarke: Is it too early for a review of this terrible year?

You thought there was bad news about the place in 2016? You thought things couldn't get worse? Heed this, Pollyanna. As I write, Marine Le Pen is being offered at no better than 2/1 to become the next president of France. William Hill has her as narrow as 6/4. Every big bookmaker quotes her as second favourite to the steady, uncharismatic Alain Juppé.

Lara Marlowe, this paper’s Paris Correspondent, reckons it’s “95 per cent certain” that she will make it to the run-off in May. Surely that chap with the safe pair of hands will cruise past the the National Front’s candidate. All precedents point in that direction. Don’t they?

In September Prof Pascal Perrineau, a prominent political scientist, told Marlowe that Juppé “can crush Marine Le Pen”, but he did offer a word of caution. “If the greatest power on Earth sends Trump to the White House, people will say . . . why not us?” he warned.

But that will never happen. Trump has no feasible path to the White House. Black and Latino voters will . . . Aaaah! I’m frightened, Mommy. Don’t make me live in the real world.

As December approaches, you are about to read a lot of articles declaring that 2016 was a terrible, terrible year. You will then read a few more pointing out that, for most of the world’s population, every year is appalling and that a few celebrity deaths and changes of administration do little to alter the ravages of poverty. That’s certainly true.

You may also hear that, even in the comfortable West, most people judge a year by the personal – marriages, family bereavement, promotion – rather than by the public. I’ll buy that.

Somebody else will gesture towards international misunderstandings in the middle of the last century and argue that Europe has had it a great deal worse within living memory. Also correct.

As long ago as July Slate magazine was asking whether 2016 was "the worst year in history". After consideration of plagues, world wars and great depressions it concluded that 2016 wasn't even in the premiere league.

Let's just say this. By the standards of recent years an awful lot of things seemed to go wrong in the past 11 months or so. The human brain finds patterns where there are none, but the cull of beloved celebrities in 2016 does feel unprecedented. The unexpected passing of David Bowie, on January 8th, now looks like an augur. You know how this went. Muhammad Ali, Prince and Leonard Cohen all keeled over.

Just this week the BBC renamed the building that houses Radio 2 Wogan House, in honour of Limerick’s most charming broadcaster. Sir Terry died just a few weeks after Bowie.

Such was the death toll that we are sure to offend somebody by an inevitable exclusion. But we mention Frank Kelly, Alan Rickman, Victoria Wood and Gene Wilder all the same.

Meanwhile, Europe experienced terror on a scale it hadn't seen since the 1970s. In March 30 people were killed in attacks on Brussels Airport. The grotesque murder by truck in Nice on Bastille Day defies comprehension. The Orlando nightclub shooting in June was just one of many massacres in the United States.

We had the Zika virus, locust swarms in Argentina, drought in Brazil and the continuing apocalyptic warming of the planet. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the continuing Syrian Civil War. The Boko Haram insurgency continues.

Many perfectly reasonable people on the right – and some on the far left – welcomed the Brexit vote as a declaration of independence, but the sense of a grand Utopian ambition crumbling into atavistic nationalism was hard to shake. We need not again mention what transpired in the United States last week.

The deaths of all those pop stars, athletes and actors is just an actuarial aberration. But the growing political derangement feels like a collective manifestation of panic. Nice liberal people point out that folk are suffering and that those outside the elites feel disconnected from the governmental process. This is worth saying.

But is the situation worse than it was in the 1970s? It is certainly nowhere near so bad as it was in the 1930s. Nothing makes sense. Millennial self-immolation has set in a decade and half later than expected.

There’s still a month to go before this wretched year vomits its way to a welcome death. There’s still time to be nice to minorities who feel shut out by rising waves of intolerance. There’s time to make an effort at understanding those with whom we disagree.

I suspect there isn’t enough time to move to France and get your name on the electoral register. But it’s worth a try.

The ante-post odds on Trump never got below 3/1.