What a difference a decade makes.
Ten years ago, as we prepared to ring out the noughties, Britain was in the grip of a financial crisis after an excess of good living had turned sour.
Gordon Brown’s government was in its death throes, its desperate economic position highlighted the following year by the outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne leaving his successor an infamous “I’m afraid there is no money” note.
Nor were things much better on a social cohesion front. Years of untrammelled immigration — deliberately fostered by a Labour government that saw a social as well as economic benefit to migration through the advancement of multiculturalism — had led to deep unease in parts of the country.
These areas, principally in the North and Midlands, had long been suffering from economic dislocation, and were now facing a social challenge as well given the absence of any kind of effective integration policy to greet the new arrivals to our shores.
The situation was to be summed up by Brown’s gaffe in calling Rochdale resident Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman” for having raised immigration when he met her on the 2010 campaign trail — though it had already been encapsulated by the explosion of Islamist radicalisation in the latter part of the decade.
In foreign policy, Britain remained ensconced in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the political playthrough from those conflicts poisoning the foreign policy debate in general.
And while there may have been a quiet sense of schadenfreude that we had escaped the carnage of the Greek sovereign debt crisis that was now threatening the very fabric of the Eurozone, the idea that we might one day leave the European Union was no more than a glint in Nigel Farage’s eye.
Nor were things much better on a social cohesion front. Years of untrammelled immigration — deliberately fostered by a Labour government that saw a social as well as economic benefit to migration through the advancement of multiculturalism — had led to deep unease in parts of the country.
These areas, principally in the North and Midlands, had long been suffering from economic dislocation, and were now facing a social challenge as well given the absence of any kind of effective integration policy to greet the new arrivals to our shores.
The situation was to be summed up by Brown’s gaffe in calling Rochdale resident Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman” for having raised immigration when he met her on the 2010 campaign trail — though it had already been encapsulated by the explosion of Islamist radicalisation in the latter part of the decade.
In foreign policy, Britain remained ensconced in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the political playthrough from those conflicts poisoning the foreign policy debate in general.
And while there may have been a quiet sense of schadenfreude that we had escaped the carnage of the Greek sovereign debt crisis that was now threatening the very fabric of the Eurozone, the idea that we might one day leave the European Union was no more than a glint in Nigel Farage’s eye.
The coalition government of 2010–15 delivered change, but against a contested political backdrop that manifested itself as a failure of the customary clarity of the first past the post electoral system. Adding in the entirely undistinguished tenure of the 2017 parliament, this meant that most of the past 10 years was spent with a cobbling together of minorities.
The Brexit referendum produced a majority for Leave, but of a narrow enough nature to show the fractures within British society and convince ardent Remainers that they might yet be able to reverse the result.
But now, in the shadow of Boris Johnson’s stunning election victory — delivered in the twelfth month of the tenth year in the decade — the spell appears finally to have been broken.
Brexit may not yet be complete, but we are now fully aware of the direction of travel and the timeframe it will take. The economic recovery of the past decade is to be turbo-charged with an austerity-busting programme of investment in public services.
The North and Midlands have re-asserted themselves electorally, to remind us that we are indeed one nation and not endless provinces of Greater London. The immigration system is to be reformed and a dramatic review of foreign and defence policy undertaken to enshrine the idea of a global Britain fit for the challenges to come.
Above all, we have a majority government once more, united in the vision and the purpose of delivering on its campaign promises, and with the ability — crucially — to do so.
As we enter the 2020s, we do so no longer with a sense of trepidation in our step, but secure in the knowledge that the nation’s destiny has been affirmed most firmly by its ultimate arbiters: the British people.
It has taken a while to say it, but it finally is “glad confident morning” once more.
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