BRITONS have much to look forward to in 2016. Street parties will take place on the queen’s 90th birthday. The English, Welsh and Northern Irish football teams will all contest the European Championship. The Royal Shakespeare Company is promising the biggest-ever celebration of the Bard’s work to mark the 400th anniversary of his death, and the Globe theatre will stage a new production of “The Tempest”.

Yet in politics, as in the skies, storms loom. Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of the Labour Party, is consolidating his grip on the opposition. In an imminent shadow-cabinet reshuffle he will show moderates the business end of his proverbial ice-axe. North of the border, the pro-independence Scottish National Party will consolidate its political hegemony at elections in May. Another vote on separation is now only a matter of time. London’s mayoral election, also in May, will accentuate the growing divide between the rich, worldly capital and the rest of Britain. And with its EU referendum expected to take place as early as June, the country’s status as a leading European power hangs by a thread.

Small wonder, then, that its allies are perturbed. Barack Obama privately talks of Britain’s “mid-life crisis”. As a commentary in the New York Times in 2014 put it: “Britain is having a kind of nervous breakdown, and its friends aren’t sure whether to say something or just look away.” Such observers are right to imply that the traumas were long in the making; more than freak intrusions on a country that has been calm and stable for decades.

Why? Each polity has its pathology and Britain’s, as Walter Bagehot noted, is muddling through. Just as its people pride themselves on their—only partly imagined—“mustn’t grumble” stoicism, its leaders possess the institutional equivalent of the stiff upper lip: a preference for patching and fudging over abolishing and remaking. It has no written constitution; its union is the messy product of years of tweaks; its political bodies, from local councils to the Lords, are great mounds of sticking plasters.

This predilection has its pros and cons. On the one hand, Britons’ mistrust of wide-eyed ideas (“Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right”, the Beatles sang in their sceptical hit, “Revolution”) explains their historical aversion to political extremism. It steers the country away from risky ventures like, some would argue, the euro. Thomas Kielinger, a veteran German correspondent in London, claims Britain’s seafaring history has made it flexible but cautious; more comfortable tacking with the winds than its uncompromising continental neighbours.

On the other hand, a penchant for the zigzag and the gentle curve over the straight line comes at a cost. Consider the Palace of Westminster. Bombed during the war, it was quickly repaired and is now crumbling. A rolling programme of restoration struggles to keep up with its decay. Muddling through, in other words, can leave big problems unresolved. It stores up contradictions that occasionally unleash thoroughly un-British political earthquakes: the Labour landslide of 1945 would have been unthinkable without the hemming and hawing of pre-war governments, just as Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution would have been without her predecessors’ procrastinations.

The same pattern is in evidence now. Thatcherism created doubts about Britain’s place in Europe, divided England from other parts of the union, propelled London towards vast wealth and presented socialists with an existential challenge. Labour inherited these tensions when it came to power in 1997, but a combination of political skill and benign economic circumstances allowed it to fudge them. It sought European integration without convincing voters of the need for it; devolved powers to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast without reforming the architecture of the union; encouraged the capital to boom without building up a counterweight and made its peace with markets without finally defeating anti-capitalists on the left. Today’s crises are, in other words, Tony Blair’s unfinished business.

O brave new world

Thus Britain’s current period of upheaval is not just overdue. It is necessary. The EU referendum forces pro-Europeans to make the gutsy case for continental co-operation. If they succeed, the vote should give British leaders a fresh mandate to build and wield influence in Brussels. Scotland’s swerve towards independence, and the accompanying grievances in England, should push politicians to transform Britain into a federation, at last putting the union on a stable footing. This should also precipitate the long-overdue decentralisation of England (a process that has already begun; Manchester will run its own health service from April). Lastly, Mr Corbyn’s leadership should force his moderate MPs to take on a reality that even Mr Blair ducked: Labour has always been two parties, one social democratic and the other anti-capitalist. Over the years it has muddled through, as concessions, feints and tactical battles have postponed a decisive confrontation. No longer: as Mr Corbyn bears down on the moderates, they will have to decide whether to push back, concede the party to him or quit—en masse, not in a dribble, as did their predecessors in 1981 when Labour last swung left—and form a new party.

Britain’s crises may yet go to waste. But today’s flux gives the country a rare chance: to forge happier relations with continental Europe, to federalise the union and to update creaky institutions (asked to vote on a painfully expensive renovation of the Palace of Westminster in the spring, MPs should demand that Parliament move to a new, modern building). It is a test not just of Britain’s ability to evolve, but also of the very practice of muddling through. A political entity can only be sceptical and incremental most of the time if, when events demand it, it can bring about a sea-change. So let Britain’s leaders take in “The Tempest” and heed its wisdom: storms may be destructive, but they can also bring redemption.