The Random People Who Made Politics in 2015

The Great Man Theory Of History holds that the fortunes of nation-states turn on an Alexander The Great, a Bonaparte, a Joseph Lister or a Nelson Mandela. Dynamic people make change, and little people follow in its wake.

The alternative is the idea that history is shaped by social currents – by a dialogue between people's needs and their beliefs that manufactures exactly the sort of "great men" a moment demands. The tides of decolonisation created Nelson Mandela. The Enlightenment pretty much made Voltaire happen. Etc.

But there is also a third, slightly more obscure theory that we've just invented. What if history is actually shaped by semi-random, incidental people who tell us about the direction of a social current? What if a handful of people who've skimmed across the headlines this year tell us more about the story and spirit of 2015 than all the pompous campaign speeches put together?

It's a theory we're going to test to destruction over the next 1000-odd words, as we reveal The Random People Who Made British Politics in 2015.

Where would any edition of Question Time be without one bundle of hot salty rage, bawling their anger at the whimpering political classes we now treat like Bugaboo Bill did women in cages? Last year it was the Bis-lookalike in the striped jumper on the Farage vs Brand showdown in Newcastle, bleating at Nige that he was "a racist", until the entire audience developed a hitherto unimagined sympathy for the tweedy populist.

This year, Michelle Dorrell from Dover made a name for herself attacking Tory minister Amber Rudd over tax credit changes. She had four kids. She'd voted Tory in the hope that they'd "do what was right for the country". Somehow she thought this meant that they would penalise people in receipt of social benefits who weren't her. But no – her tax credits were going to be docked, and life really wasn't fair. She spluttered and railed, as Rudd shrank in front of her trying to merge inconspicuously with the fabric of her chair.

Only, it was all bullshit. Because the nail salon Dorrell runs from her home doesn't make a profit, and the since-scrapped changes were only designed to apply to new claimants, and then only from 2017, she was never going to be affected by tax credit changes.

Nowadays, politics cleaves neatly into two parts: the part where people shout at the TV for stuff they want. And the stuff where people vote in their own self-/class-interest against having to pay for it. And nowhere did that tension short-circuit itself more exquisitely than with Shouty Weepy Woman On Question Time.

"Your albums Bastard, in 2009, and Goblin, in 2011, are based on the premise of your adopting a mentally unstable alter ego who describes violent physical abuse, rape and murder in graphic terms which appears to glamourise this behaviour."

Are these are the words of an over-eager phone interviewer from musicOMH.com? No – they are in fact the voice of the Home Office, and by proxy, Home Secretary Theresa May, who personally banned Tyler The Creator from entering Britain in August, a week before he was due to play Reading and Leeds festivals.

Nothing exposed the sinister vacuity of Britain's hate-speech laws quite like the spat between Theresa May – representing the forces of the professionally outraged, and Tyler The Creator – representing professional outragers. In a sense, each got what they wanted. The fact that Tyler managed to have himself banned (despite having come to the UK for tours in 2010,11,12, and 13, and some eight weeks before his banning, when he hired an entire cinema) gave a rapper past his commercial peak a certain fresh notoriety. It did feel like the sort of The Kids v The Man struggle that had been consigned to ancient history, like Jim Morrison was suddenly waving his cock around onstage in Miami again.

But the world isn't just a series of free NME posters. The fact that anyone can still be banned for song lyrics in 2015 is Putinesque. Perhaps Tyler can console himself in the arms of Julien Blanc, the hapless pick-up artist who found himself on the receiving end of another arbitrary banning campaign by the Twitter warriors who now decide who gets into Britain. Who rules this country? A clear, considered, judicious panel of idiots with pitchforks on social media - working in close co-operation with the Home Secretary, of course.

"Coming to the UK is a privilege," the letter to Tyler stated. "And we expect those arriving here to respect our shared values." Not advice handed out to Chinese president Xi Jinping, last seen riding up the Mall in a gold carriage alongside the Queengold carriage alongside the Queen.

No Nukes Dog Guy is, as implied, a man with a dog who turns up at any protest going. This year, for instance, No Nukes Dog Guy turned up at the traditional May Day march. And he turned up at Brian May's Badger Funeral Protest outside the Houses Of Parliament. At both events, his message was the same and entirely unrelated to the protest at hand: "We need to stop using nuclear power and instead replace it with a series of jet turbines powered by biofuel".

This year, from Refugees Welcome to the protests against the government that took place three days after the people had gone to the polls to decide on the government (but before the government had actually done anything), No Nukes Dog Man has bound himself to any cause going. He may be equally dislocated at all of them, but this slightly dishevelled gentleman embodies the spirit of a post-apathetic age – since we have all hashtagged NotAllISIS or started our change.org petition to have Jan Moir shoved inside a tumble-dryer full of dead refugee babies, the idea of throwing yourself at a passing cause hasn't seemed so seductive for 20 years.

Who would have thought that 2015 would be Enver Xoxha's year? After all, the former communist dictator of Albania died in 1986.

Before he died, he banned beards, typewriters and colour televisions as being incompatible with true Albanian communism, built 750 000 concrete anti-invasion bunkers almost at random across a nation of only 3 million people, killed 100 000 and kidnapped a dentist to act as a body double, forcing him to have plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance. A momentous life. But it is for being quoted by Jeremy Corbyn at a Labour Christmas do that Xoxha made his mark on 2015.

Corbyn did so only a few days after his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, had quoted Mao in the Commons. All of which seemed to sum to Corbyn's capacity to employ the same Gump-like naivety that had propelled him to power in losing it. A time in which he seemed hell-bent on showing thousands of young people who voted for him why they will spend their lives being disappointed by their idols. Where he went from unparalleled strength in September to weakness and shambles over Syria in November, cuckolded by Hilary Benn who lasciviously fucked his parliamentary party right in front of him at the despatch box. The New Left thing has been the central domestic earthquake of 2015. But will it ever get its shit together? Xoxha says no.

The UKIP Local Bigot has been a staple character of British political panto for a good five to 10 years now, but with the party rolling out a juggernaut election campaign, and at one point predicted to get up to 30 seats, the nation's cellars and outhouses were scoured for UKIP supporters who could wear the purple rosette come election day. If only they could have found 600 people without big skeletons in their closets.

Despite a selection process they'd assured everyone was the most rigorous and anti-fascist of all the parties, every couple of days on the election trail, it seemed, a man tumbled out of a barn in Dorset still clutching the golliwog he was making love to, or a woman in Lincolnshire wrote a six page leaflet accidentally quoting Mein Kampf on pages 1, 3, 4 and 5.

In a tight-run field, the gold cup winner of UKIP Local Bigot news stories was possibly Robert Blay, UKIP's North East Hampshire candidate, who was smoked out by a Mirror sting that caught him saying that his Conservative rival, Ranil Jayawardena, was "not British enough to be in our Parliament". He also accused him of timing the birth of his child to coincide with the general election, and was suspended by the party for threatening to shoot Jayawardena.

Yet eventually, we began to lose interest in all of this carrying-on. UKIP had given voice to a strand of opinion long dormant in British society. Now, it was back, and really, once the numbers got past a certain point, it was de facto mainstream. What was there left to do but accept that?

If there was a central figure of election night, it was someone in Nuneaton who thought David Cameron was "probably quite nice to his kids" but "didn't really get involved in politics" and certainly "didn't like it when they always shout at each other in Parliament". They were "a bit worried about migration if I'm honest" and knew that "you can't spend more than you earn – the budget's like any household" and "just wanted what's best for my kids". They definitely didn't "like it when Europe tells us what to do".

The Shy Tories had been lying to pollsters for months – beaten into timidity by a media that they felt was laughing in that haughty metropolitan way at their beliefs. At 10:01PM they got their chance to pounce – the most shocking exit poll since the last one. Nuneaton – the nation's most crucial swing seat – fell to the Tories just before 1AM, and with it, Ed Miliband's last hopes went stiff.

Meanwhile, since their election night coming out party, the Shy Tories have become much less shy. The old consensus that if you slash at the social welfare budget or reject the usual timid emollient language around migration you will be branded an "extremist" has melted away. The 90s era when William Hague rejecting the Euro made him seem like a dangerous demagogue is long over. Anything rightish Cameron did, voters just demanded he double it. What did the Lib Dems ever do in government? With hindsight, it now seems obvious.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, pathetic political stickmen like Andy Burnham were falling all over themselves to tack ever further leftwards, while consensus candidates like Liz Kendall couldn't attract voters if they doused themselves in electoral pheromones. The nation was fully back to the position it had last occupied in 1987. Two tribes.

@gavhaynes

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