But appearances can be deceptive. Take a closer look and it becomes clear that 2015 was one of the hinges of history — a pivotal year around which everything changed. Before we get onto world events, just consider what happened at home.

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2015 was an election year in the UK. It seems like another era now — but the shock result laid the ground for everything that was to follow. The election results in 2017 and 2019 were unexpected too, but at least in those years the pollsters correctly predicted the winning party, if not the winning margin. In 2015, however, we were expecting Labour to be the largest party and Ed Miliband to become Prime Minister. Then reality happened.

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Labour limped in second with just 31% of the vote. They also lost their Scottish heartland. The SNP took almost every seat, leaving Labour with just one. A humiliated Ed Miliband resigned immediately and went off to Ibiza. Five years previously, at the start of his leadership, he’d spoken of a “new generation” of Brownite politicians. But in 2015, it proved to be the last generation. David Miliband (remember him?) had already quit Parliament and the country, while Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander (remember them?) both lost their seats. However, this was just the start of their troubles. The fatal blow was yet to fall.

I’ll come back to that in a bit. But first, a brief word about the Liberal Democrats — who were reduced from 57 seats to just eight. They’d expected to be punished for entering into coalition with the Conservatives, but this was beyond all expectations. A cruel twist of fate was that Nick Clegg was one of the few Lib Dems not to lose his seat. Having been deputy PM, he returned to the Commons as the outgoing leader of the fifth party of British politics (only to be unseated by Jared O’Mara two years later).

To make matters worse, the prime beneficiary of the Lib Dem collapse was the Conservative Party. In fact, the blues picked up so many yellow seats that they gained a wholly unexpected majority — the first for the Tories since 1997. And yet this moment of triumph for David Cameron and George Osborne would be their undoing. Having promised a referendum on the UK’s membership of European Union, they were now honour-bound to deliver one. And we all know how that worked out for them.

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But let’s stay in 2015 and move on to the other big event of the British political year: the Labour leadership contest. This was meant to be a two-horse race between Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, both of them surviving members of Ed Miliband’s new generation. Liz Kendall was the Blairite no-hoper. Eventually, a candidate of party’s Left was also rustled-up — with a number of moderate Labour MPs lending him their nominations out of a sense of fair play. Big mistake.

By the time they realised Jeremy Corbyn was all-too-popular with the party’s newly expanded membership (another Miliband legacy), it was too late. When the votes were counted, he won on the first round. The new generation hadn’t just lost the election, they’d lost their party. Permanently, it would seem.

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Is this the end for Labour?

By Paul Embery

So, yes, 2015 was the year that changed British politics forever. Even something as unrevolutionary as the re-election of a Conservative Prime Minister contained seeds of chaos. Though Tory strategists must have delighted in the result, the Conservative vote share barely improved on 2010. The majority was a fluke produced by the happy coincidence of the Lib Dem collapse and two voter rebellions (SNP north of the border, UKIP south of it) that happened to hurt Labour more than the Tories. The volatility and unhappiness of the electorate should have filled the political establishment with dread. Instead, they looked ahead to the approaching referendum with confidence. Another big mistake.

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Meanwhile in America, there was a parallel failure to read the runes. With Barack Obama’s presidency drawing to a close, the race for the Republican and Democratic nominations was underway. It was pretty much all sewn-up in advance for Hillary Clinton (enough to see off a vigorous challenge from Bernie Sanders), but there was no such consensus among the Republicans. What was conventionally assumed to be a joke bid by Donald Trump gathered momentum. By July 2015, opinion polls showed him in the lead. By the end of 2015, he was established as the clear favourite.

Trump did not hide what he stood for. In the things he said and how he comported himself, his contempt for the political establishment — including that of his own party — was clearly signalled. By 2016 it was probably too late to stop him, but in 2015 mainstream Republicans could have united around a credible candidate. As for the Democrats, some thought could have been given as to how to avoid playing into Trump’s hands. But they obviously decided not to go for that.

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Why were the liberal elites so sure of their own position? Perhaps because 2015 marked the end point of what could be called the Long Financial Emergency. This began in 2007 with the Credit Crunch, it was followed by the banking meltdown of 2008, then the Great Recession and eventually the escalating Eurozone crisis. 

The latter came to a head with a confrontation between Greece and the so-called ‘Troika’ (i.e. the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF). In January 2015, the Greek general election brought the hard Left to power. Alexis Tsipras became Prime Minister and Yanis Varoufakis finance minister. Demands for further austerity were rejected in the ‘Oxi’ referendum in July. The people had spoken. However, the EU wasn’t listening. The Greek government was presented with an offer it couldn’t refuse. Tsipras gave in, Varoufakis resigned. The Eurozone and its reckless bankers were saved — but at the cost of imposing permanent austerity on the Greek people.

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How the world forgot the financial crash

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And that, for the foreseeable future, was that. The end not just of the Eurozone crisis (or at least the first Eurozone crisis), but the moment at which the Long Financial Emergency gave way to the Great Economic Amnesia. It’s not that we’ve solved our fundamental economic problems, we just stopped talking about them.

Still, the political threat to the established order was apparently over. Despite everything, Greece was the only western country to elect an avowedly anti-capitalist government — and that was quickly brought to heel.

This could have been the year that Greece was forced out of the Eurozone. This in turn could have brought down the entire single currency, which would have triggered a new global economic crisis. Sometimes a period in history is as significant for what didn’t happen.

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Yet just as one disaster was averted another was escalating. The Mediterranean migration crisis did not begin in 2015, nor did it end there. Thousands have died and continue to die trying to get to Europe on overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels. But in this was the year that a vast and complex tragedy was captured in one heartbreaking image — a photograph of the tiny, lifeless form of Alan Kurdi — a three-year-old Syrian boy found drowned on a Turkish beach.

2015 was also the year when the German government announced an open-door policy for hundreds of thousands of refugees — a decision that provoked a populist backlash within Germany and its European neighbours, especially those traversed by the main migration routes.

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How to beat the politics of punishment

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Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment drew upon other events in 2015, which began with the murderous attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and carried on with further atrocities including the horrific Bataclan massacre, also in Paris. These outrages were, of course, cynically exploited by anti-establishment politicians. But the populists were inadvertently helped along by those in authority who clearly failed to address the concerns of their frightened electorates.

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This should go down in history as the year of establishment complacency. A year when the elites thought that they’d weathered the storms of the banking crisis. A year when they felt they could continue along the path of rapid social and cultural change — while offering no hope of meaningful economic reform. A year in which the Clintons and Camerons of this world assumed they’d be the ones who shaped the rest of the decade.

In a way, they did.

So it is for me and my politics. I haven’t had one political awakening; I’ve had dozens. I’m still not sure that the way I see the world today is the right one. Frankly, the level of conviction most political writers seem to have these days strikes me as indulgent narcissism.

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What if we gave children a vote?

By Polly Mackenzie

My first political memory is staying up late in 1992 with my father, nestled on the sofa in the upstairs living room of our house in Birmingham. As the results ticked in, and his hopes for a Labour victory expired, I felt his sense of despair as if it were my own. I believed it was my own for a long time: I had a sort of lizard-brain level conviction that I was Not a Tory.

Around this time I remember walking home from school with my good friend Catherine, who had no such in-built disdain for the Conservative party, and wanted to know why I was so passionately against them. In an instant, I conjured up a rationalisation for my stance: the mess the government had made of child support laws had pitted my parents against each other during their divorce. They had stayed friends, I maintained, until the Child Support Agency ruined things.

Catherine nodded wisely, and said that made sense. But I felt awkward, because I knew it wasn’t true. Yes: I had a vague inkling that my parents had found the CSA hard to deal with. But I knew the truth was that I hated the Conservatives because I loved my father. The feelings came before the reasons, not the other way around.

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I continued to consider myself Not a Tory for years, with other vague political identities layered on top, like George Bush is a Bad Guy and Northern Ireland is Important (I had a boyfriend whose dad had served there, and who had friends caught up in the Omagh bombing). But honestly, I paid almost no attention to politics.

In 2002 I had an interview for a graduate trainee scheme at Reuters where they asked me to name “a news story from the last few months”. I stared blankly until the interviewer generously reminded me of a few: a Foot and Mouth epidemic, a postponed General Election, the Soham murders, the death of the Queen Mother. I didn’t get the job.

In the end, I came to politics through policy. I was a journalist at a magazine called Property Week, where I was assigned the job of reporting on tax and planning policy (as well as industrial warehouses). I loved it. I saw how incentives and rules create system-level change, or system-level failure. I never got the hang of reporting on deals — the life blood of the magazine — but discussing and explaining policy? I had found a metier.

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There's no such thing as Left versus Right

By Peter Franklin

So I went to work for the Liberal Democrats, as a policy adviser on housing and local government — that’s when I fell in love. Because joining a political movement is exactly like falling in love. The feelings come before the reasons.

I went to party conference, in Harrogate, and I stayed up until 3 in the morning, then kept myself awake during the day by chain-drinking caramel macchiatos. I felt like I was part of something. I belonged. I gazed longingly at the most senior political advisers, like Charles Kennedy’s handsome press officer, and his handsome speechwriter, and I dreamed of being like them.

My addiction to The West Wing bears a lot of responsibility for this, of course: this was my Aaron Sorkin phase, where I believed earnestly that all problems could be resolved if we were all just a bit more articulate, clever and brave.

Then came the coalition, in which I worked as Nick Clegg’s senior policy adviser. I’d long since been able to observe intellectually that the Conservative Party was not the exclusive force for evil I’d been brought up to believe it. But I think I only emotionally absorbed this when I was working day after day alongside talented, wise, compassionate and thoughtful people who chose to wear a blue rosette at election time. There are still Conservatives I’d cross the road to avoid. But there are far more I’m privileged to call friends.

I shared an office with Steve Hilton, the maverick adviser to David Cameron. At one point he introduced me to a policy specialist who was advising on the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners. “You know how I’ve told you that everyone who’s against PCCs is just an establishment bore who has to be ignored,” Steve told this adviser. The adviser nodded. “Well, Polly’s the exception. You can listen to her.” And most of the time, this was the spirit of the coalition. We mostly found ways to listen to each other, instead of starting with the assumption that our opponents were wrong. It made for better government. I believed in it.

But my illusions that you could win hearts and minds with decent government and reasonable compromise were shattered by the 2015 General Election. The morning after, Paddy Ashdown stood in our Lib Dem HQ among the hungover and the heartbroken hangers on, who couldn’t bear to face the reality of going home. Perched on a chair, his voice cracking, he asked: “Why would anyone compromise in the national interest ever again?”

He reminded us that politics is feelings, not facts. We’d placed our faith in facts, and reasonableness. We’d tried being clever, articulate and brave; and discovered that the public preferred intransigence.

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The abusive inhumanity of our politics

By Polly Mackenzie

I miss being partisan. It’s so comfortable to be right all the time, and there’s no view better than the one from the moral high ground, from which your enemies are the ranged forces of evil. It’s the way to make money as a columnist. It’s the way to win votes at the ballot box. But even these victories are less valuable than the feeling of being surrounded by your tribe and the warm fuzzy glow of righteousness. I miss it. I just don’t feel that tribal belonging any more. I’m a political apostate.

In fact, I think we do better when we listen to each other with an open mind. I think politics should be about finding a way forward together, not winning and making the other guys shut up for a few years. I think all our parties, and every individual within them, are wrong on some things and right on some others. And I think the same of myself.

Humility needs a place in our politics. I hope some day it will take the place of the hubris we see from our current crop of leaders.

So it is for me and my politics. I haven’t had one political awakening; I’ve had dozens. I’m still not sure that the way I see the world today is the right one. Frankly, the level of conviction most political writers seem to have these days strikes me as indulgent narcissism.

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Don't let Brexit become the next Troubles

By Jenny McCartney

My first political memory is staying up late in 1992 with my father, nestled on the sofa in the upstairs living room of our house in Birmingham. As the results ticked in, and his hopes for a Labour victory expired, I felt his sense of despair as if it were my own. I believed it was my own for a long time: I had a sort of lizard-brain level conviction that I was Not a Tory.

Around this time I remember walking home from school with my good friend Catherine, who had no such in-built disdain for the Conservative party, and wanted to know why I was so passionately against them. In an instant, I conjured up a rationalisation for my stance: the mess the government had made of child support laws had pitted my parents against each other during their divorce. They had stayed friends, I maintained, until the Child Support Agency ruined things.

Catherine nodded wisely, and said that made sense. But I felt awkward, because I knew it wasn’t true. Yes: I had a vague inkling that my parents had found the CSA hard to deal with. But I knew the truth was that I hated the Conservatives because I loved my father. The feelings came before the reasons, not the other way around.

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Why shouting 'traitor' is a fool's game

By Giles Fraser

I continued to consider myself Not a Tory for years, with other vague political identities layered on top, like George Bush is a Bad Guy and Northern Ireland is Important (I had a boyfriend whose dad had served there, and who had friends caught up in the Omagh bombing). But honestly, I paid almost no attention to politics.

In 2002 I had an interview for a graduate trainee scheme at Reuters where they asked me to name “a news story from the last few months”. I stared blankly until the interviewer generously reminded me of a few: a Foot and Mouth epidemic, a postponed General Election, the Soham murders, the death of the Queen Mother. I didn’t get the job.

In the end, I came to politics through policy. I was a journalist at a magazine called Property Week, where I was assigned the job of reporting on tax and planning policy (as well as industrial warehouses). I loved it. I saw how incentives and rules create system-level change, or system-level failure. I never got the hang of reporting on deals — the life blood of the magazine — but discussing and explaining policy? I had found a metier.

More from this author

Our politics of impossible promises

By Polly Mackenzie

So I went to work for the Liberal Democrats, as a policy adviser on housing and local government — that’s when I fell in love. Because joining a political movement is exactly like falling in love. The feelings come before the reasons.

I went to party conference, in Harrogate, and I stayed up until 3 in the morning, then kept myself awake during the day by chain-drinking caramel macchiatos. I felt like I was part of something. I belonged. I gazed longingly at the most senior political advisers, like Charles Kennedy’s handsome press officer, and his handsome speechwriter, and I dreamed of being like them.

My addiction to The West Wing bears a lot of responsibility for this, of course: this was my Aaron Sorkin phase, where I believed earnestly that all problems could be resolved if we were all just a bit more articulate, clever and brave.

Then came the coalition, in which I worked as Nick Clegg’s senior policy adviser. I’d long since been able to observe intellectually that the Conservative Party was not the exclusive force for evil I’d been brought up to believe it. But I think I only emotionally absorbed this when I was working day after day alongside talented, wise, compassionate and thoughtful people who chose to wear a blue rosette at election time. There are still Conservatives I’d cross the road to avoid. But there are far more I’m privileged to call friends.

I shared an office with Steve Hilton, the maverick adviser to David Cameron. At one point he introduced me to a policy specialist who was advising on the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners. “You know how I’ve told you that everyone who’s against PCCs is just an establishment bore who has to be ignored,” Steve told this adviser. The adviser nodded. “Well, Polly’s the exception. You can listen to her.” And most of the time, this was the spirit of the coalition. We mostly found ways to listen to each other, instead of starting with the assumption that our opponents were wrong. It made for better government. I believed in it.

But my illusions that you could win hearts and minds with decent government and reasonable compromise were shattered by the 2015 General Election. The morning after, Paddy Ashdown stood in our Lib Dem HQ among the hungover and the heartbroken hangers on, who couldn’t bear to face the reality of going home. Perched on a chair, his voice cracking, he asked: “Why would anyone compromise in the national interest ever again?”

He reminded us that politics is feelings, not facts. We’d placed our faith in facts, and reasonableness. We’d tried being clever, articulate and brave; and discovered that the public preferred intransigence.

More from this series

As a headstrong activist, I was a dangerous thing

By Paul Embery

I miss being partisan. It’s so comfortable to be right all the time, and there’s no view better than the one from the moral high ground, from which your enemies are the ranged forces of evil. It’s the way to make money as a columnist. It’s the way to win votes at the ballot box. But even these victories are less valuable than the feeling of being surrounded by your tribe and the warm fuzzy glow of righteousness. I miss it. I just don’t feel that tribal belonging any more. I’m a political apostate.

In fact, I think we do better when we listen to each other with an open mind. I think politics should be about finding a way forward together, not winning and making the other guys shut up for a few years. I think all our parties, and every individual within them, are wrong on some things and right on some others. And I think the same of myself.

Humility needs a place in our politics. I hope some day it will take the place of the hubris we see from our current crop of leaders.