“…the core question of our time is how we meet the challenge of globalisation, and how we retool or retire the idea of the nation state in response. You can agree with UKIP’s stance or despise it with every fibre of your being, but right now they are the only British political party to have identified the core problem and gone before the electorate with a proposed solution.”

‘Tis the season for Year In Review blog posts and breathless predictions about what more to expect in 2015. And while these can be good fun to write, and even read, it is safe to say that none of the political predictions, at least, are worth the paper they are printed on, or the real estate they occupy on your smartphone screen.

The truth is, nobody knows what will happen as Britain enters the seismic election year of 2015. The outcome of this general election is almost impossible to predict, and certainly cannot be divined by examining national-level polling that fails to take into account the furious dynamics that will come into play in individual constituencies. Those who confidently predict the total electoral obliteration of the Liberal Democrats forget the huge effort expended by many LibDem MPs to effectively ingratiate themselves with their local electorates, for example, while those predicting that Nigel Farage’s People’s Army will occupy multiple benches in the House of Commons after May 7 overlook just how punishing Britain’s electoral system always is to new and insurgent parties.

But if it is not possible to look forward with much certainty – though a hung parliament and some form of ‘confidence and supply’ minority administration led by either the Tories or Labour seems increasingly likely – we can at least look back at the year that was 2014, in order to see who has been right and who has been calamitously wide of the mark.

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