Autocracy ahead on points but democracy has a new champion

Looking back at the year that was, you could be forgiven for thinking that democracy is on the ropes.

Trump got in the first crippling body blow, hot on the heels of a Brexit round one, by taking power in the US on the back of an election campaign in which he promised to ban foreign Muslims, and called Mexicans rapists and drug smugglers.

More power shots followed with right-wing appointments, and it should come as no surprise that an emboldened Ku Klux Klan are now giving Nazi salutes in support of him.

Then, of course, there is his budding bromance with that arch-defender of democracy Vladimir Putin. Don't rule out a bare-chested safari by the duo in the near future, maybe in Mexico.

While on the subject of Nazis, Austria yesterday had its own day of reckoning, which nearly resulted in Western Europe's first far-right president since World War 2.

France, usually more a lover than a fighter, is also drifting inexorably to the right, with the prospect of the ultra-right National Front's Marine le Pen counter-punching her way to victory over an increasingly bewildered opponent in the form of François Fillon.

And then of course there's Italy, where the current referendum on a proposal to reduce legislative powers might well KO Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Funnily enough, or not, the victor could be comedian Beppe Grillo, whose Five Star Movement is widely referred to as "the Trumpisti".

But perhaps we shouldn't throw in the towel just yet. In a strange turn of the tide, a man who called himself "Excellency Sheikh Professor Doctor President", and said he would rule Gambia "for a billion years" if God willed, was ousted last weekend by a former shop security guard, who extols the virtues of time-keeping and working long hours.

In this anything is possible world, perhaps this minor victory heralds the beginnings of an African Spring, and just maybe our own 'dope on the rope' is not democracy, but an increasingly autocratic president in the throes of his final round?