By any standards, it has been an astonishing political year in and outwith Westminster, with changes to party leaderships, and a general election which gave the Tories their first outright victory for more than a generation, paving the way to a yet another war. Ian Hernon looks at some of the highs and lows.
January
Goldman Sachs gave 121 of its London staff a £367 million New Year bonus, averaging £3 million each. Weeks later the US bank gave 34,000 workers an £8.3 billion pay and perks bonanza averaging £245,000 each. David Cameron, with no hint of irony, urged bosses to give workers a pay rise.
Islamic terrorists attacked the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 mostly journalists and cartoonists.
Tony Blair said that the 2015 general election was shaping up to be one “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”.
February
Ed Miliband promised that Labour will increase spending on education by at least the rate of inflation, and that the Department for Education’s £58 billion budget would be protected. The Labour leader also outlined plans to stop infant classes having more than 30 pupils in them for longer than a year.
Scotland’s First Minister described the UK Government’s “austerity economics” as “morally unjustifiable and economically unsustainable”. Nicola Sturgeon also said a Labour government would have to abandon “failed” austerity policies to win the support of SNP MPs.
Lord Green, who was made a minister by David Cameron, was found to have avoided paying up to £2.3 million tax. Former Tory treasurer Lord Fink said that “everyone” avoids tax in some way.
Anglican bishops condemned coalition welfare cuts and warned that Britain had become a “society of strangers” with an “ugly undercurrent of racism”.
Lord Kinnock, responding to criticism of Labour’s proposed mansion tax, said: “For the rich and very prosperous, a couple of hundred quid a month isn’t going to make much difference. They’d spend that on lunch.”
March
Labour accused the Conservatives of planning “extreme” post-election public spending cuts of £70 billion.
In his Budget, George Osborne set out plans for a further £30 billion in savings and five more years of austerity if the Tories hold on to power. Welfare bills were set to be an average of £3 billion lower each year than predicted in December thanks to the Tory benefits blitz. Ed Miliband said: “This a budget that people won’t believe from a Government that is not on their side.”
David Cameron ruled out standing for a third term. He then launched his election campaign by claiming Labour would hike taxes by £3,000 over four years… but within hours Tory chairman Grant Shapps admitted that the figure was a “guess”. George Osborne confirmed that the Conservatives would not publish how proposed £12 billion in welfare cuts would fall until after the election.
April
The National Health Service began to dominate the election campaign. Miliband promised that every woman giving birth would get a dedicated midwife. Cameron pledged same-day GP appointments for everyone over 75. Labour also promised a fully-costed extra £2.5 billion for the NHS to pay for 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more doctors, plus an integrated care system for the elderly and long-term infirm. It would also guarantee GP appointments within 48 hours and cancer tests within a week, and repeal the coalition’s “privatisation plans” and cap health service profits.
On the economy, Labour would “cut the deficit every year and balance the books as soon as possible in the next Parliament” – largely in line with the stated aims of the Tories and Liberal Democrats. The manifesto also pledged to scrap the hated bedroom tax, restore the 50p top tax rate, stamp out non-dom tax dodges, bring back the 50p top income tax rate for those earning over £150,000, “cut and then freeze” business rates, and reduce student tuition fees by £3,000.
Up to £4 billion worth of Lloyds Bank shares would be offered to small investors at below-market prices if the Conservatives win the election, David Cameron confirmed. The offer would be part of the £9 billion sale of shares in the bailed-out bank announced in the Budget in March and would “help us recover billions more to pay down the national debt”. Labour said the Tories had announced the plans at least seven times before.
May
At the general election, the Conservatives won a House of Commons majority of 12 and David Cameron promised to “govern as a party of one nation”’. Ed Miliband quit as Labour leader, Ed Balls lost his seat, and Labour was wiped out in Scotland, with the SNP winning 56 of 59 seats. Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg held his seat but resigned as leader after his party was reduced to just eight seats. UKIP got 13 per cent of vote but took only one seat – Nigel Farage briefly quit as leader
Chukka Umunna, the bookies’ favourite for the Labour leadership race, pulled out three days after throwing his hat in the ring, citing public scrutiny. That left Andy Burnham as front-runner.
In the first Queen’s Speech in a non-coalition government, Cameron could not disguise the squalor of the newly-elected Tory Government’s legislative programme, or its financial incompetence. The key issue was welfare cuts, including a lower cap on benefits, while delivering campaign promises to boost the NHS and childcare without any further tax rises. Top of the legislative agenda, however, was the bill to permit a European Union referendum, possibly as early as next year. The second priority was a new anti-strike law designed to prevent industrial action against cuts across the public sector. Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman said that the Conservatives intend to “set the nations of the country against each other” and threaten “basic rights at work”.
Other measures included: right-to-buy legislation covering housing association tenants, a move which will undermine the concept of social accommodation, and help for first-time buyers, with 200,000 starter homes made available to under-40s at a 20 per cent discount; and further Scottish devolution and plans to give English MPs more say over measures that only affect England.
June
The shortlist for Labour’s candidate to fight the London mayoral election in 2016 was Diane Abbott, Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan, David Lammy, Gareth Thomas and Christian Wolmar. Jim Murphy stood down as Scottish Labour leader as the party agreed to his plan for “dramatic” change.
Islamic terrorists killed 38 people, more than half of them Britons, in the Tunisian resort of Sousse. Most were gunned down on the beach.
July
George Osborne’s post-election Budget included the threatened welfare blitz and a national living wage rising to £9 an hour by 2020. Other key points included: an increase in the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million, phased in from 2017, underpinned by a new £325,000 family home allowance; personal allowance, at which people start paying tax, to rise to £11,000 next year; mortgage interest relief for buy-to-let homebuyers restricted to basic rate of income tax
Asked about the Calais refugee crisis, David Cameron spoke of “a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain”. Labour’s Harriet Harman said “he should remember he is talking about people and not insects” and called the use of “divisive” language a “worrying turn”.
August
David Cameron faced accusations of “cronyism” after handing 26 peerages to former Tory ministers and aides. The list includes ex-Tory leader William Hague and David Cameron’s Downing Street “gatekeeper” Kate Fall. It also included Douglas Hogg, the former minister who claimed parliamentary expenses to clean the moat around his family home, and top Tory James Arbuthnot who had to pay back expenses he had claimed for garden compost. Plus lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone.
The Lib Dems got 11 peers – three more than their number of MPs – with eight for Labour, making a total of 45 Lords members, swelling the total size of the Upper House to 826. The SNP branded it “a sorry list of rejected politicians, cronies and hangers-on with big chequebooks”. Senior Labour figures to be elevated include former ministers David Blunkett, Alistair Darling, Peter Hain and Tessa Jowell.
September
Jeremy Corbyn promised to lead a Labour “fight back” after being elected the party’s new leader by a landslide. The veteran left-winger got almost 60 per cent of more than 400,000 votes cast, trouncing his rivals Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. He immediately faced an exodus of Shadow Cabinet members – but senior figures including Ed Miliband urged the party’s MPs to get behind him. Corbyn was a 200-1 outsider when the three-month contest began, but he was swept to victory on a wave of enthusiasm for his anti-austerity message and promises to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons and renationalise the railways and major utilities. The Islington North MP won on the first round of voting in the leadership contest, taking 251,417 of the 422,664 votes cast – against 19 per cent for Andy Burnham, 17 per cent for Yvette Cooper and 4.5 per cent for Liz Kendall. Former minister and Gordon Brown ally Tom Watson was elected deputy leader.
Billionaire Lord Ashcroft, a former Tory donor, made explosive allegations in his biography of David Cameron. It included claims that the Prime Minister had smoked cannabis at Oxford, joined a society which included “bizarre rituals and sexual excess (including that he “put a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth), and allowed cocaine to circulate in his London home. Number 10 refused to “dignify” the claims with an official response.
At the Labour conference, Jeremy Corbyn hammered his critics – inside and outside the Labour Party – who have branded his leadership as a danger to Britain. Instead, he told the conference, the biggest danger to old-fashioned values of decency and security would come from five more years of Conservative mayhem.
October
At the Conservative conference, George Osborne said: “We are the builders.” But there were rumblings over cuts in tax credits which will cost three million families more than £1,300 a year, Europe, the refugee crisis, Syria, overseas aid and Parliamentary reform. Theresa May said she would never “in a thousand years” accept EU migrant quotas.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell U-turned on his promise to balance the books. He admitted – five times – that his shift was “embarrassing.”
Tony Blair apologised – sort of – for mistakes made over the Iraq War and said there were “elements of truth” to claims the war caused the rise of Islamic State. The ex-PM said “those of us who removed Saddam” did bear some responsibility for the situation in Iraq today. But he again defended the invasion, saying it was “hard to apologise” for removing Saddam Hussein and that Iraq might have become like Syria otherwise.
Chinese dumping was blamed for the loss of more than 5,000 steel jobs in Redcar, Scunthorpe and Scotland. The Government was severely criticised for its “fawning” over Chinese President Xi during a state visit.
November
Scottish Labour Party delegates overwhelmingly backed a vote to scrap the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system, based at Faslane naval base on the Clyde. It meant Labour now holds different positions on the issue north and south of the border.
Commons watchdogs urged George Osborne to postpone cuts to tax credits for a year to enable debate about the future of working-age benefits. The cross-party work and pensions committee also warned there was no “magic bullet” to protect low-paid workers.
MI5 has secretly been collecting vast amounts of data about UK phone calls to search for terrorist connections over 10 years under a law described as “vague” by the government’s terror watchdog. The record emerged as Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled a draft bill governing spying on communications by the authorities.
IS attacks in Paris which killed 130 people enjoying a Friday night out were described as an “act of war” by French President Francois Hollande. After prevarication by Jeremy Corbyn, the scale and horror of the massacres sparked in a “sea change” in Labour attitudes to tackling terrorism up to an including British involvement in bombing targets in Syria provided it is part of a coalition involving Russia.
George Osborne’s alleged climbdown over tax credit changes in his Spending Review and Autumn Statement was swiftly exposed as a con-trick which will hit millions of low-income families by the next general election. The Chancellor claimed that a £27 billion windfall in the public finances meant that the planned £4.4 billion of cuts to tax credits due in April would be scrapped. But the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said the tax credit move would change nothing in the long run because the cuts would still feature in the new Universal Credit system, which is due to replace tax credits by 2018. The IFS estimated that the benefit change would leave 2.6 million working families on average £1,600 a year worse off by 2020
December
MPs overwhelmingly backed UK air strikes against Islamic State/Daesh in Syria, by 397 votes to 223. Within an hour of the crucial vote, RAF Tornado jets have carried out their first attacks the Omar oil fields. Sixty-six Labour MPs sided with the government as David Cameron secured a larger than expected Commons majority. The Commons debate, over 10 and a half hours, featured an impassioned speech by Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn who backed the extension of military action in defiance of party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
It emerged that Mondelez International, the global food company which bought Cadbury’s, paid no tax in Britain on revenues of more than £2 billion.
US presidential wannabe Donald Trump sparked outrage when claimed that British police feared to enter Muslim communities. An e-petition calling on him to be banned from the UK attracted 300,000 signatures.
David Cameron retreated on a key pledge to tackle EU migration. He also dropped new rules to hold executives to account for misconduct. And in a further climbdown he abandoned a five-year programme to tackle obesity.
The Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee let Tony Blair off the hook during an inquiry into the handing over of Libyan dissidents to the former Gaddafi regime.
Jeremy Corbyn defied calls to boycott a Stop the War Christmas dinner, calling the organisation a “vital force at the heart of our democracy.”
A deal, which aims to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C, was approved by all 195 countries at a summit in Paris. David Cameron has said the deal represents “a huge step forward in securing the future of the planet”.