Osborne sacked. Clegg a Brussels commissioner. Riots a way of life. Let's hope it won't happen - but a historian imagines a worst case scenario for... Britain in 2015



The date is Wednesday, May 6, 2015. Tomorrow, after five years in ­Downing Street, David Cameron will face the verdict of the British people.



It was a premiership that began with such high hopes, with such great expectations of change — but it turned out very differently from how any of us had imagined.



When Mr Cameron votes in his Oxfordshire constituency, using the controversial ­Alternative Vote system for the first time, perhaps his mind will go back to the week it all began to change. For in the space of just a few days in November 2010, there were the first real signs of the turmoil to come.

Anarchy: Such scenes could become common in 2015

First came the warning from Admiral Lord West that defence cuts carried the risk of ‘national humiliation’, not least in the ­Falkland Islands — or as we will soon be ­calling them, the Malvinas.



Then there was the Prime Minister’s trip to China, now unquestionably the world’s most dynamic power.



And finally there was the Battle of Millbank, where student anarchists stormed the Tory Party headquarters — a violent outbreak of social unrest that is commonplace in 2015, but which was shocking five years ago.



One obvious change since 2010 is that Mr Cameron goes into tomorrow’s election ­without his right-hand man. Nick Clegg lasted only four years as Deputy Prime Minister before a Lib Dem revolt, orchestrated by Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy, pushed him out of the party leadership.



Now, Mr Clegg is back in his familiar ­Brussels stamping ground as vice president of the European Commission.



And although the Lib Dems pulled out of the Coalition in 2014 and ­scuttled off to their backbench ­comfort zone, leaving the Tories to soldier on as a minority government, opinion polls suggest that even their leader, Vince Cable, will lose his seat at the election.



The truth is that the Lib Dems never survived the humiliation of reneging on their manifesto ­promise of phasing out university fees.



When tuition bills rose in 2013, it was not only students but hundreds of ­thousands of middle-class parents, faced with huge fees for their ­children’s education, who howled with fury.

Interesting times: David Cameron could spend much of the next five years on overseas trips

In the past few months, both Oxford and Cambridge have unveiled plans to leave the state system and charge full, American-style fees, ­confident they will attract thousands of foreign students.



Meanwhile, seven former ­polytechnics went bust in the past year alone. On their windswept ­campuses, there is no sadder sight than the abandoned science labs, the boarded-up windows covered with anarchist graffiti.



But boarded-up windows are a common sight in 2015.

Faced with gigantic debts after Gordon Brown’s spending spree and the bailouts of Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the then Chancellor George Osborne took the bold gamble in 2010 to slash £81billion in public spending over four years — the biggest cuts in modern history.



Even Osborne himself admitted that half a million public sector jobs would have to go, but he was ­confident the private sector would take up the slack. What he had not bargained for, though, was the ­implosion of the eurozone just a few months later.



When Ireland was forced to go to the International Monetary Fund in December 2010 for mammoth loans, the shock sent ripples throughout Europe. As German voters reacted with fury at the prospect of yet another bailout, the world economy began to tip back into recession.

Test of endurance: Will Nick Clegg be able to keep work with the Conservatives for the next five years?

And with turmoil in the Middle East pushing up petrol prices, Britain’s businesses had their worst festive season since the Seventies. By the spring of 2011, five major High Street chains had followed earlier casualties such as Woolworths and Borders into administration.



Today, we are still living with the consequences of the economic ­holocaust.



Unemployment hit three million in early 2011 and four million a year later. On almost every street corner you can see the consequences: bored, listless young men, their eyes devoid of hope.



Although George Osborne stuck to his guns, he had not bargained for his close friend David Cameron’s ruthless self-­interest. After a string of byelection ­disasters, the Prime Minister sacked him in the summer of 2013.



His replacement was the more emollient Michael Gove, who promptly changed course and announced a new dose of ­quantitative easing, printing money to boost the economy in time for the election. Having left Cabinet, Osborne made a savage speech in the Commons, warning of looming inflation.



As for poor Iain Duncan Smith, his ­welfare reforms were initially applauded as the most daring since the days of William Beveridge, the founding father of the welfare state, back in the Forties. The tragedy, though, was that they came years too late. With unemployment ­rising quickly, the cost of benefits rocketed.



So out Duncan Smith went, too, another victim of the Prime ­Minister’s obsession with his public image. In his place as Welfare Secretary, Mr Cameron appointed Lib Dem Danny Alexander — which meant he had the unlikely distinction of being the only man to hold four different ­Cabinet posts in as many years.



Perhaps it is not surprising that ­Cameron has spent so much time abroad. Here, too, though, the ­contrast between image and reality has been painfully apparent.



For the truth is that Britain now cuts a sadly reduced figure on the world stage. For all the Prime Minister’s efforts to court Barack Obama with gifts of trendy ­wellington boots and fashionable street art, he never bargained for the fact he was wooing a one-term President.



Many of Obama’s old allies have still never forgiven Hillary Clinton for her stunning political coup, when she resigned as Secretary of State, challenged him successfully for the Democratic nomination and ­annihilated Sarah Palin in America’s first all-female presidential election.



Downing Street, too, was taken aback — and was even more appalled when Mrs Clinton chose not London but Paris for her first presidential trip.



But who could blame her? After the disaster of the 2012 Olympics — overcrowded trains, the unfinished athletes’ village, the debacle of ­competitors unable even to get into the stadium because of the endless security scares — Britain’s ­international standing has never been lower.

One to watch: America could have its first woman president by 2015

Thanks to the deep defence cuts unveiled five years ago, it is no ­wonder that the Argentine ­government, buffeted by its own ­economic crisis, decided to regain some domestic popularity by ­stepping up its attempts to recover the Falklands and the surrounding waters. Some of us hoped Mr ­Cameron would stand up to the ­Buenos Aires government.



But when Mrs Clinton insisted he ‘see reason’, that was the end of the matter. In 2020, on the 200th ­anniversary of the original Argentine claim on the islands, the Falklands will become the Malvinas — and there is nothing the outraged ­islanders can do about it.



It is not Washington, though, but Beijing that feels like the centre of the world in 2015. The red flag now flutters from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean as, every day, thousands of African ­labourers scratch out copper and cobalt for the ravenous, smoke-wreathed metropolises of ­booming China.

Every day, Chinese cargo ships head east across the Indian Ocean, bringing timber, diamonds and oil back to the mother country. And on the return journey, they carry assault rifles, mortars and fighter planes, destined for the civil wars in Egypt, the Sudan, the Congo and Zimbabwe.



Centre of the world: China will become increasingly influential economically in the next five years

Across the developing world, regimes compete to capture Beijing’s eye. Those deemed friendly, such as the apparently indestructible Islamic regime in Iran, bask in the warmth of Chinese aid. For other countries, there always used to be Washington — but these days, absorbed in a ­bitter struggle with the Tea Party, the Hillary Clinton administration cares little about the rest of the planet.



In the meantime, bloody fighting continues between the government and Islamist rebels in Pakistan, where law and order have broken down completely. And although it has been ten years now since the last major attack on British soil, the recent Al Qaeda atrocities in Rome and ­Marseilles were a chilling reminder of the ­consequences of complacency.



All the time, the expansion of the European Union proceeds apace. Under 2014’s Budapest Treaty, we handed over yet more powers to ­Brussels, even signing up to a new integrated European Border Force.



That was too much for some Tories — but such is David Cameron’s grip over his backbenchers that David Davis’s brave, lonely leadership ­challenge got nowhere.



No wonder, then, that UKIP is riding so high in the polls, with some experts thinking their share of the vote might reach double figures in ­tomorrow’s ­election. The real shock, though, is the resurgence of the BNP, which performed ­abysmally in 2010 but saw its fortunes boosted once Britain re-entered recession.



Bradford, Blackburn and Burnley have still not recovered from the terrible rioting in the summer of 2012, when far-Right activists and Islamic ­radicals clashed on High Streets across the north of England. Sadly, though, violent clashes have become the norm over the past few years.



It all started with the riot outside Millbank Tower, but that now seems a vicarage tea party compared with what was to come. The first ­Winter of ­Discontent in 2010-11 was bad enough; the second, a year later, was even worse.



As public sector workers walked out on strike, encouraged by Labour MPs, every evening TV news bulletin brought new pictures of fighting between demonstrators and police. Even now, few weeks pass without another strike on the London ­Underground, in our schools or even in our ­hospitals. Sometimes it feels less like 2015 and more like 1974.



No wonder, then, that David Cameron’s star has dimmed considerably since that love-in with Nick Clegg in the Downing Street rose garden five years ago.



First we had to endure the spectacle of his ­personal photographer on the public payroll. Then it was revealed he had employed (at ­taxpayers’ expense) a personal barber; then a masseur; then, almost incredibly, a manicurist.



At the Tory grassroots, discontent has been mounting. Liberal commentators like to scoff at the Mad Hatters movement, which was set up after the success of the American Tea Party.



But they are wrong to underestimate such a widely supported movement. In their fury at ­Britain’s eclipse abroad, their outrage at the ­violence on the streets and their horror at the obsession with style in Downing Street, the Mad Hatters merely reflect the feelings of millions of middle-class voters.



But David Cameron has always been a lucky ­politician. He could hardly have found a more ­lacklustre opponent, for example, than Labour’s Ed Miliband, whose feeble Commons ­performances have had his MPs groaning for the past five years.

Back to the future: Many blame Labour Primer Minister Gordon Brown for our current woes. Would Ed Miliband be more effective as the country's leader?

Even when Mr Miliband tried to assert his ­authority last year, sacking his rebellious Shadow Home Secretary Ed Balls, the move backfired — because his Shadow Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper (Balls’s wife), promptly walked out, too. Not since the days of Michael Foot and Tony Benn, in fact, have Labour gone into a general election so divided and so hopeless.



Of course, Britain in 2015 has its pleasures. Since winning the Ashes in Australia four years ago, our cricketers have never looked back. The great ­football implosion during which many top ­Premier League clubs, such as Manchester United, went bankrupt means the game is much more ­competitive — as proved by Bristol City becoming this year’s champions.



And now that Tony Blair is a U.S. citizen, at least the rest of us can forget he ever existed — even though the consequences of his wasted years in office are still all around us.



As for the ordinary, hard-working families of ­Britain, the past five years seem to have been an unending slog, the bills steadily mounting, the pressures ever greater.



Occasionally there have been signs that we are on the right track; occasionally, it seems there is light at the end of the tunnel. But the phrase that comes to mind is that old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’



And as Britain falls farther from the first rank of world politics, as the riots continue and the pound collapses, I cannot help wishing that life in 2015 was just a little less interesting.

