It’s not an understatement by any stretch to say quite a bit has happened in the UK this decade.
A referendum, austerity, another referendum, Olympics, jubilees, royal weddings and terror attacks are just a handful of the notable and very, very different events that mark the last 10 years of profound change.
So in an attempt to make sense of it all, and to give you something to read while your turkey cooks, HuffPost UK has ranked each year from best to worst…
1. 2012
Why 2012? Was it because of the Olympics and the now largely-forgotten feeling of British togetherness? Well, partly, but mostly it’s because the world didn’t end.
You’ve probably forgotten by now but there was a small but significant portion of the world’s population that believed 2012 would be the end of everything as we know it, based on the belief that the December 21 of that year marked the end of the 5,126-year-long cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar.
To most folk it seemed ridiculous then and even more ridiculous now, but it was such a big deal that Nasa wrote an article in an attempt to calm people down a bit.
Of course there was more to 2012 than just that. The summer saw the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympics climaxed in Super Saturday, when British trio Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all took gold within just 44 minutes of each other.
Not to mention that wonderfully quirky opening ceremony. Take a few minutes to remember…
In short, it was a great time to be British and we were beaming with pride about everything – except politics.
The Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year was “omnishambles”, originally coined by BBC political satire The Thick of It and meaning a state of total disorder.
Although, in hindsight, we were probably a bit premature pulling it out of the bag so early in the decade…
2. 2013
There were some huge wins for Britain in 2013, not least Andy Murray’s first Wimbledon victory. Just watch the winning moment and remember how you felt…
Glorious.
What’s more, the gay marriage bill passed. These days, David Cameron is remembered as the bloke who set the whole EU referendum business in motion, but back then even die-hard Tory critics couldn’t knock him for that.
As Gary Burgess, who married his partner Alan in 2018, told HuffPost UK: “That marriage is available to all is just wonderful, and is hopefully the start of a chapter in history which will eventually leading to people looking back in wonderment that it was ever even an issue in the first place.”
But what about the bad things that happened that year? Well, the biggest political scandal was Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne being jailed over a speeding offence scandal.
The story was headline news for months but almost seems twee given the political scandals that have rocked the world since.
Oh, and it wasn’t a great year for meat-eaters, who discovered there was a good chance they’d been unknowingly eating horses.
3. 2015
There wasn’t loads to celebrate in 2015. Its presence so near the top of this list is down to the fact that the scandals, like the Chris Huhne affair above, look a bit quaint now.
Kicking off the new year, a Fox News guest claimed on US TV that Birmingham was a “Muslim-only city”.
Steven Emerson said: “In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”
The British public reacted in the way they know best – by mercilessly mocking Emerson.
Such was the level of outrage that then-PM David Cameron spoke out, saying Emerson was “clearly a complete idiot”.
In scandals involving actual Brits, 2015 was the year Jeremy Clarkson was fired by the BBC for allegedly punching a producer, an affair that dominated headlines for weeks.
So on balance, that’s three years that you could probably class as “good”. Unfortunately that’s your lot – it’s a whole lot darker from here on out.
4. 2010
The first year of the decade is synonymous with one word – austerity.
The newly-elected Tory-Lib Dem coalition initiated huge cuts in public spending to pay off debts largely incurred by bailing out banks during the 2008 global financial crisis.
The result 10 years on? Homelessness, child poverty and reliance on food banks have all massively increased, not to mention an NHS at the verge of breaking point.
Last year, then-PM Theresa May declared austerity over but those at the sharp end of the cuts disagreed.
There was also the inconvenient volcano in Iceland that erupted and grounded air traffic across much of Europe for days. On the plus side, though, its name – Eyjafjallajökull – provided endless entertainment for viewers watching news presenters trying to pronounce it.
5. 2014
Just two years after uniting around the Olympics, the signs that all was not quite well in the United Kingdom culminated in the referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014.
The Yes and No sides fought a bitter and hugely divisive battle with the No campaign eventually emerging victorious.
In hindsight, the referendum and its lead up was just a taste of what was to come.
The increased role of social media, accusations of bias flying left, right and centre and the increasingly vitriolic level of public debate these entailed would only become more common during the most important moments in the UK in the years after.
Also this year, a sporting moment at the opposite end of the scale to Super Saturday and one any English person would gladly forget – the 2014 World Cup.
As ever, England went into the competition full of hope but this was swiftly extinguished by defeats at the hands of Italy and Uruguay.
Then to top off the misery we could only draw 0-0 with Costa Rica, and England were out in the first round.
6. 2018
Speaking of World Cups, let’s begin 2018 on a positive.
No, we didn’t win, but England’s performance in 2018 by a team of youngsters relatively new to the international stage, was bloody excellent.
Just two years previously, centre-back Harry Maguire was among thousands of England fans at Euro 2016 in France and now found himself on the pitch.
England were knocked out by Croatia in the semi-finals but it didn’t matter – the country was so very proud.
But elsewhere there was little to celebrate – 2018 was the year of some really serious shit.
In March, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in the town of Salisbury.
In the weeks and months that followed, it became clear they were victims of a bungled plot by two Russian intelligence agents.
The ensuing saga and diplomatic crisis took a bizarre turn when the two suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, gave an interview and insisted they were not intelligence agents and that they had simply, innocently, been on a two-day trip to see Salisbury Cathedral.
This short, off-season international jaunt just happened to coincide precisely with the poisoning of a former Russian spy with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union.
There was another major scandal this year, one that spoke far more to something wrong with the fabric of our own society rather than a meddlesome foreign state – the Windrush scandal.
It saw thousands who had answered the post-war call to come to the UK to work in essential services wrongly being denied access to state healthcare, losing their jobs, and even being threatened with deportation – after living in the UK for decades.
Ministers faced a furious backlash and home secretary Sajid Javid – who replaced Amber Rudd after she resigned over the scandal – launched a £200m compensation scheme in April to “right the wrongs” suffered by people who faced difficulties demonstrating their immigration status.
2018 was also the first time a certain president visited our shores. On the one hand, hundreds of thousands of angry people swarmed the streets of the UK in protest, but on the other hand, at least it momentarily brought us all together for a few summer days in June.
7. 2019
Let’s not beat about the bush. This year has been pretty bloody naff.
2019 was dominated by Brexit – or, to be more precise, grinding, depressing and incessant debates, votes and arguments over how and when (and whether) it would or should happen.
Last week, we finally got an answer – but not before months of the above and, of course, another general election.
Not even the royal family, who in previous years had at least been a source of the odd celebration and four-day weekend, could provide any light relief.
In fact, Prince Andrew made sure they were an absolute embarrassment as he tried to fend off questions about his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in one of the most extraordinarily ill-advised TV interviews in history.
From detailing a trip to Pizza Express in Woking to claiming he had been medically unable to sweat after an “overdose of adrenaline”, the show left viewers across the UK astounded.
On the plus side? 2019 was the year tackling the climate emergency finally took overdue centre stage – at least for the public, if not for politicians. Greta Thunberg lead a grassroots global rebellion that saw millions of people take to the streets.
Only thing is, it might all be a bit too late. Oh well, we had a good run.
8. 2016
Ah, yes, 2016. The year the Brexit referendum divided the country, an extremist murdered MP Jo Cox and Donald Trump became the most powerful man on the planet.
All in all, it was rather grim, but let’s remember some of the good stuff.
First up, the British public was never more British than when they decided they wanted a new £200m royal research ship to be named Boaty McBoatFace.
But in keeping with the tone of the year, some boring bureaucrat spoiled everyone’s fun and named it after Sir David Attenborough instead. BOO!!!
Later in the year it was Olympics time again in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Team GB absolutely stormed it.
We finished second in the medal table, with 27 golds, 23 silvers, and 17 bronze medals, the best Olympic result in over a century.
Despite these moments of celebration though, the year was particularly naff for one very sombre reason – everyone good died.
Barely a week passed in 2016 without breaking news that another beloved personality had passed away.
George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Leonard Cohen, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood… it was relentless.
9. 2011
You may be surprised to see 2011 so far down the list in second-to-last place, but hear us out.
Yes, Brexit has caused divisions, austerity has been crippling and all your favourite celebrities are dead, but one thing happened in 2011 that was truly shocking and unforeseen (by the people who mattered) and spoke to genuine grievances in the UK that were clearly not being listened to.
The riots.
What began as a protest against the shooting dead of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham quickly escalated into thousands of people taking to the streets, ransacking and torching buildings and wrecking entire neighbourhoods. As well as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Gillingham and Nottingham were affected.
Thousands of riot police were deployed in an attempt to quell the violence but five days later, five people were dead and the country was stunned at the scenes of carnage.
10. 2017
And so we come to the worst year of the decade – 2017.
On June 14, a catastrophic fire at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in London killed 72 people.
The disaster was caused in part by an attitude of cost-cutting among those working on the building’s recent refurbishment, leading to the use of inadequate materials that helped the blaze spread so rapidly.
The sight of the destroyed tower, in one of the richest boroughs in one of the richest cities in the world, was, and still is, a stark reminder of the shameful inequality so prevalent in our country.
As if that wasn’t enough, it was literally a year of terror.
March 22: five people were killed when Khalid Masood drove his car at pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing Pc Keith Palmer to death outside Parliament.
May 22: 22 people, mainly children and teenagers, were killed in a suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena.
June 3: eight people died after three terrorists went on a vehicle-ramming and stabbing spree around London Bridge.
June 19: one person died after Darren Osborne drove a van into pedestrians outside a mosque in Finsbury Park.
September 15: dozens narrowly escaped death after a bomb malfunctioned on a District line train at Parsons Green Underground station.