Portrait of the year | 10 December 2015

January

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a poster saying: ‘The Tories want to cut spending on public services back to the levels of the 1930s,’ and Ed Miliband, the party leader, said he would ‘weaponise the NHS’. Two male ‘hedge witches’ were wed under the equal marriage law in a pagan ceremony in Edinburgh. Alexis Tsipras became prime minister of Greece, heading a Syriza coalition. In Paris, gunmen murdered 17 people, 11 at Charlie Hebdo, the magazine that had published cartoons of Mohammed. The price of Brent crude oil dipped below $50 a barrel, down from $107 a year earlier. A French court prevented parents naming their daughter Nutella.

February

Mr Cameron said people who were too fat to work should not be able to claim benefits. Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw were suspended from their parties after being separately secretly filmed apparently offering their services for payment.