Tag Archives: political messaging

A call for radical honesty in our political messaging

By Tom Reeve | Sat 20th December 2025 - 8:57 am

We often say we care about lived experience, and that is true. We talk clearly about housing, childcare and benefits. In some areas, we have led the way with strong examples and practical policies. Liberal Democrat councils are building new council homes. We pushed to end the two-child benefit cap. In government, we raised the personal tax allowance, the last significant rise before it was frozen.

But when it comes to the economy, our message still stops short of what many people want to hear. And this hurts us when campaigning, especially against the Greens and Reform who are prepared to shout out that the system is broken.

The problem is not that voters lack detail. It is that mainstream politics often lacks honesty, and sometimes it lacks listening.

Politicians talk about growth, markets, interest rates and public finances. These things matter. But, too often, we talk about them as if they exist in a separate world from everyday life. For many people, especially those on low and modest incomes, the economy is not a forecast or a chart. It is whether they have enough money to make choices. That’s why I have previously called for the OBR to publish an analysis of the impact of the Budget on poor people.

We need radical honesty. And that starts by putting on the big ears.

That means listening properly to what people are telling us, even when it makes us uncomfortable. Especially when it makes us uncomfortable.

On the doorstep, many people now lean towards Reform. Too often, the political response is to assume bad motives. To hear racism where there may instead be frustration, insecurity or anger at a system that feels stacked against them. That instinct is not just unfair. It is politically lazy.

Posted in Op-eds | 23 Comments

Mathew on Monday: a year that revealed the limits of old politics

By Mathew Hulbert | Mon 15th December 2025 - 7:29 pm

As this political year draws to a close, it has revealed something fundamental about the state of our country: Britain is crying out for change, but all too often is being offered more of the same.

After years of Conservative failure, voters rightly demanded competence and decency.
Yet while the Conservatives have continued to implode-trapped between ideological exhaustion and an inability to reckon honestly with the damage they have done-the change on offer from Labour has too often felt cautious, managerial and constrained by self-imposed limits.

Stability matters, of course. But stability without ambition risks becoming stagnation.
This has been most obvious in the economy.
Inflation has eased, but living standards remain under severe pressure, particularly for younger people locked out of secure housing and good work.

Labour’s insistence on tight fiscal rules may reassure markets, but it has yet to reassure families wondering when life will actually get easier. The Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to talk as if they were not in charge for fourteen years – a political amnesia that convinces no one.

Nowhere is the failure of old politics clearer than in our public services. The NHS has endured yet another year of crisis, with strikes reflecting not militancy but desperation. Conservative neglect created this mess; Labour’s reluctance to be bold risks managing rather than fixing it.