2016 was supposed to be the year of “business as usual”. It was an American presidential election year that saw the Republican Party in such disarray that it struggled to find a conventional front runner for its candidate that many analysts assumed that the Democrats would win easily.

In the UK, a gambit by David Cameron (remember him?) designed to quieten Eurosceptic voices in his own party and pull the rug out from under the feet of upstart party UKIP, was expected to comfortably endorse the UK’s continuing membership of the EU, after he won a raft of concessions from his EU partners (which probably even he couldn’t name now). As we know, things didn’t go to plan.

The Federal Reserve intended to increase interest rates four times across the year, bringing them up to 1.25%. In the event, concerns over a weak oil price and a Chinese stock market shunt (crash is perhaps too strong a word) derailed that plan. These factors cut three months’ worth of growth out of stock prices and the Fed feared that higher interest rates could choke of growth, so the decision was deferred to later in the year for after the UK’s endorsement of the EU – which, as we know, didn’t happen. Finally, just this month, the Fed raised rates by 0.25%, taking the base rate up to 0.5%, with a suggestion that rates may rise in response to the economic policies of the incoming president in 2017, sending the Dollar to a 14 year high against a basket of currencies. That president will not be Democrat Hillary Clinton, of course.

In late June, a bout of summer madness gripped 52% of the UK electorate, providing a narrow mandate for the UK to leave the EU, much to everybody’s shock – not least those who had campaigned for it. Having promised to remain, come what may, and trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon signalling UK withdrawal from the EU the day after a vote to leave, the leaving was done by Cameron who stood down as PM and a few months later resigned as an MP, “leaving” others to clean up the mess he had caused. None of the promises that inspired the electorate to vote “Leave” have survived the vote (such as an extra £350 million a week for the NHS; a points based immigration system or a guaranteed continued membership of the Single Market (promised in the Tory manifesto in 2015)). Instead, a “promise” to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017 has emerged and been (non-bindingly) endorsed by parliament. The fate of EU citizens in the UK and British expats living in the EU remains up in the air (but this is almost certainly a phoney war) and the desire, or otherwise, of the post EU UK to remain in the Single Market/Customs Union/EFTA all are subject to near daily contradictions from ministers in the cabinet and Brexit supporting MPs.