2017 has been our best year yet, and 2018 will be even better.

I know that’s an unfashionable view. The official line is that we’re all going to hell in a handcart, that Brexit is crashing our economy, that Donald Trump is threatening world peace and that our living standards are stuck.

In fact, though, there has never been a better time to be alive. And there has never been a better time to be British.

Let’s start with mankind in general.

People are living longer, healthier and more fulfilled lives than ever.

A whole industry depends on persuading us that global poverty is getting worse, but the numbers tell a different story.

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In 1990, 38 per cent of human beings lived on a dollar a day or less.

Today, at equivalent prices, that figure has fallen to nine per cent.

You can take any measure you like. We are less likely to be ill, or to be murdered or to die in war. More of us can read. Fewer women die in childbirth. More kids make it to adulthood. More adults cast meaningful votes in elections.

In Britain, as elsewhere, life is generally getting better.

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More of us are in work than ever before. We’re making and selling things previous generations never dreamt of.

Those economists who say that things haven’t improved in a generation seem to have forgotten how we lived 20 years ago — with no cheap flights, no wifi, four channels on TV and maybe the occasional Blockbuster video.

It is, of course, human nature not to see the improvements. Every generation, going back to ancient times, thought it was going through unusually hard days.

We moan about high prices without stopping to think that many of the things we are buying previously didn’t exist. We complain about immigration but rarely ask why so many people are ­determined to come to “austerity Britain” rather than stay in high-spending France.

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What of Brexit? Are we, as the Dutch PM announced shortly after the Leave vote, in a state of “economic and political meltdown”? Hardly.

To the visible annoyance of some ­Europhiles, our economy has continued to flourish since the vote. Manufacturing orders and industrial output are at 30-year highs. Unemployment is at a 42-year low.

Exports are rising. The Stock Exchange is at an all-time peak. The City of London remains the world’s premier financial ­centre and earlier this month Forbes magazine declared Britain to be the best place in the world to do business in 2018 — a ranking it has never given us before.

The threats issued by Remain during the Referendum turned out to be bunkum.

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We have not each been charged an extra £4,000 in tax. Scotland is not ­leaving the UK. In fact, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has shelved her plans for an independence vote.

The Calais jungle has not been moved to Kent. Instead, it has been dismantled.

As for political chaos, while it’s true that the election result took most observers by surprise, Brexit remains comfortably on track.

MPs voted by a massive majority of 372 to trigger the withdrawal process, and the bill to restore the supremacy of British over EU law is now passing through ­Parliament. At the General Election, the parties that wanted another EU referendum — the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens — lost ground, while 85 per cent of voters backed parties that promised to deliver Brexit.

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Britain and the EU have sensibly agreed to guarantee the rights of people already living in each other’s territory, to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

Britain will meet some EU bills in the years to come, but a tiny fraction of what we would pay as members.

So what will 2018 bring? That’s up to us. We can now design policies to suit ­ourselves.

We can cut taxes. We can scrap EU regulations. We can ensure lower prices through free trade agreements with the many countries queuing up to sign deals with us.

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Being a free country means being free to succeed or fail. We could, I suppose, opt instead for Jeremy Corbyn, who regrets that the USSR lost the Cold War.

But I doubt we will. It’s not the kind of people we are.

We remain an enterprising nation. We lead the world in biotech, law, finance, education, TV.

We sell tea to China, ­kayaks to the Inuit, boomerangs to ­Australia.

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We are as well placed as any nation on Earth to make a success of this century.

The eyes of other countries are upon us, watching to see whether we stumble.

We will surely show them that we are the resolute and innovative nation we have always been.