As 2025 draws to a close, the dreaded ‘political round-ups’ return, with their stock phrases and trite clichés in tow.
As 2025 draws to a close, the dreaded ‘political round-ups’ return, with their stock phrases and trite clichés in tow. While the BBC declares “2025 was a crazy year”, Sky News echoes with “It has been a turbulent year” and the Financial Times bemoans a Trump-induced “blizzard of news”. Expect more of this sort of thing over the first half of January, with political and cultural commentators of all stripes weighing in on what was an unprecedented year in recent history. The one thing they do seem to agree on, however, is that these past 12 months have been ‘the worst year ever’. Despite the obvious sensationalism in the claim (I know few people who would rather be living in 1348, or 1665, or 1939) it is a feeling shared by a worryingly large section of the population, in particular the deeply cynical younger generations and students. It’s for this reason that many people might welcome the clean break that a new year provides. Personally, I have been taking the opportunity to look back – more specifically, to look back at the year that so many see as a pivot point in the political history of the West, now one decade in the past. It is not an original idea to say that 2016 was an especially intense year in politics. So many of the problems we carry into 2026 can be directly traced back to roots in that year. There are two notable examples of this seismic shift that hold particular significance in recent memory: Brexit and Trump. It is crucial to understand how these shifts came about, how they affected the dominant style of politics when they occurred, and how they still affect us today.
The first of the political earthquakes of 2016 was the result of the European Union Membership Referendum. The fallout from this poll would come to define an era of British Politics in a way few issues ever have. Brexit thrust both main political parties into bitter infighting, intense negotiation, and what arguably became a tunnel-vision approach to politics. While I maintain that all that one can say about Brexit has been already said (and said by writers with far greater insights that I) it is true that Brexit became central to the idea of 2016 being ‘The Year Things Went Wrong’. The referendum results surprised pollsters, rejected the wisdom of the main parties, and came as a significant divergence from what many expected from the second term of David Cameron.
Immediately following the 2015 General Election, Cameron had many reasons to be confident in his position. His party had exceeded expectations and no longer needed to enter into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Additionally, Labour had suffered its worst result since 1987, and thanks to the idiosyncrasies of the first-past-the-post voting system, UKIP had only managed to return one MP despite attracting 12.6% of the vote nationwide. Furthermore, the Fixed Term Parliaments act ensured that the next election was not due to take place until May 2020. A comprehensive legislative agenda was set for the next five years, and the chance of a challenge to Cameron’s leadership by one of his own members was low. A little more than a year later, however, Cameron had resigned, taking with him both his agenda and the relative calm of the Coalition years. While this did not mean the end of centrist, ‘middle ground’ politics, it did represent a significant concession of those politics to more traditional, ideologically-motivated impulses.
For three years, it felt like Brexit had consumed UK politics, with few issues or campaigns receiving comparable attention over the acrimoniously repeated expressions ‘no-deal’, ‘hard Brexit’, and several other favourite phrases. But when looking back, perhaps the most striking consequences of this referendum were the cracks that it exposed in both the Conservative and Labour parties’ carefully stage-managed illusions of parliamentary unity. Indeed, both lead parties would see a leadership contest within three months of the result. Theresa May would become Prime Minister after the withdrawal of her only remaining opponent, and Jeremy Corbyn would be re-elected as Labour Leader by party members, despite losing the confidence of 80% of his sitting MPs. While it was well known that the Conservative Party was composed of pro- and anti-European wings, Labour’s divisions along similar lines were thought to be relegated to the 1980’s. The mixed attitudes within these parties could be seen as a precursor to today’s far more divided politics, with infighting clearing the way for smaller, more united parties to claim more legitimacy.
The long-term effects of the referendum, despite formally being a ‘settled issue’, still have a deep impact on UK politics. There was great discussion immediately before the 2024 and 2025 Budgets on how much of the government’s woes could be attributed to Brexit, with no clear consensus emerging over the intense disagreements. Furthermore, the memory of the turbulent 2016 to 2019 negotiation period is often resurrected by political parties even today. Starmer has confirmed that rejoining even a customs union is not on his agenda, though a split in the Labour party seems to be emerging on the issue. Few within the leadership want to be seen to ignore the result of the referendum or negotiate re-entry, given the intense diplomatic disagreements and challenges the UK faced upon its exit. The Conservatives have remained relatively quiet on the issue, though they have continued to attack Labour’s “Brexit capitulation that would turn Britain back into a rule-taker from Brussels.” Reform are finding it difficult to disassociate themselves from the chaos that followed the referendum result, though they have resorted to blaming the Conservatives for mismanagement of what they see as a noble aim, and Farage has declared his intent to re-negotiate the deals agreed by the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats and Greens hold similar positions on Brexit, believing that the aim of Brexit, in addition to the way negotiations were handled, was a mistake. Both seek to rejoin the EU, with Ed Davey calling it a “longer term objective” and Zack Polanski confirming that rejoining the EU continues to be a Green Party aim. Whatever the opinions of the party leaders as they stand now, it is clear that the Brexit issue is not about to go away – only weeks ago, the Liberal Democrats won a largely symbolic vote to try and pressure the Government into renegotiating a customs union with the EU. Furthermore, as pressures on the leaders of various parties continue unabated, we may be in store for some significant policy U-turns or compromises under the direction of a new figurehead.
Perhaps even more than Brexit, 2016 was the year of Trump. The ups and downs of the twice-President’s political career over the past decade have truly been like watching a soap opera – and the metaphor is especially relevant given Trump’s enduring presence (in various forms) on US television since the mid-1990s. 2016 truly was the year ‘Trumpism’ took off, less as a coherent ideology or political vision, and instead as a shorthand to describe Trump’s erratic, often haphazard attitude toward communication and policy. In a Presidential election that many saw as a foregone conclusion, Trump delivered a political earthquake by defeating the immensely experienced lawyer and career politician Hiliary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State (equivalent to the UK’s own Foreign Secretary) for 8 years under President Obama. Clinton was also First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Clinton’s surprise defeat again feels like a significant break from the pre-2016 trajectory – a marked shift away from the centrist, liberal (some would say sensible) political paradigm that had endured and strengthened since the end of the Cold War.
Though it has been the subject of countless analyses, it is generally accepted that Trump achieved this upset by leveraging a patriotic, anti-establishment and anti-immigration platform. These ideas would become the blueprint of his Presidency – yet in many ways they were the antithesis of the post-Cold War consensus of globalist, institution-building attitudes. The idea of ‘politics-as-management’ was firmly rejected, in favour of a return to ‘politics-as-ideology’, (or even ‘politics-as-tribalism’) *. These ideas, after being crystallised and refined in the ‘Trump Interregnum’ of 2021-2024, came back with a vengeance in 2025 for his second term – it is not an exaggeration to say that every significant action Trump has taken since his inauguration can be seen as an expression of one of these three ideas. In 2026, we can expect this trend to continue, and likely intensify; as 2025 closed out, Trump showed no signs of supressing his administration’s radical streak. The White House’s new National Security Strategy, released at the beginning of December, goes so far as to warn of “civilisational erasure” for Europe, should migration policies and “bodies [undermining] political liberty” endure.
Like 2016, Trump has a crucial set of elections to prepare for in 2026; this year’s Midterm elections will be seen as an important hurdle for the Trump administration to overcome in seeking the completion of its agenda by 2028. A range of seats and positions are being contested, including all seats in the House of Representatives and one third of the seats in the Senate. Additionally, thirty-nine states will see gubernatorial elections (elections for the role of State Governor), giving significant powers in key states to the winners. Midterms have traditionally been seen as a poll on the leadership of the current President, and Democrats are hoping to capitalise on the widespread feelings of unease among US voters. Nancy Pelosi, former House Speaker and longtime Democrat Grandee, declared on Monday that she believes Democrats will have the required seats to retake the House of Representatives, and then take the fight to Trump. Poll numbers seem to support this, though some may take Pelosi’s words with a pinch of salt – she endorsed both Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris with similar confidence during their respective election campaigns. Nevertheless, the starting gun has most certainly been fired on the campaign for these Midterm elections; few on the Republican side will be feeling overconfident about their ability to draw a resounding victory in the way Trump was able to in 2024.
To call 2016 a pivotal year for world politics would be an understatement – and we have only touched on two of the major events that occurred that calendar year. 2016 was also the year North Korea conducted two nuclear tests, the year a 6.2 magnitude earthquake killed 297 people in central Italy, and was the year that most US troops withdrew from Afghanistan. However, Trump and Brexit remain important, not just in the political sphere, but also in the minds of the public – in part, because of their enduring impacts, but crucially, because of how disruptive these events were to the established system. Brexit shook the cause of European Integration in the UK to the core; it left the main parties scrambling for clarity and relevance, and it cast doubt on the EU’s famous aim of “ever closer union”. Across the pond, Trump stormed onto the US political stage, cultivating not just a new type of politics, but an altogether too familiar ‘strongman leader’ role. These disruptions continue to hold a place in the forefront of political engagement and social awareness, mythologising 2016 as ‘The Year Things Went Wrong’. Dare we ask whether 2026 will be any better, or will we continue along the path we began one decade ago?
* It is worth noting, for completeness, that Trump most certainly did not invent the particular combination of ‘patriotic, anti-establishment and anti-immigration’ ideas as a platform. Much time has been devoted to understanding movements and parties (often uncritically termed ‘populist’) that hold similar values, as has much discussion gone into the specific factors to which they owe their rise. What Trump did do, however, was deftly adapt these ideas to his own context, and blend that with his existing celebrity, to bring that movement to the White House – a result which would have been unthinkable only years before it came to pass.