Should Campaigners Be Offering Hope—Or Demanding It?
From welfare to wealth taxation, Heathrow expansion to non-dom capitulation, life under this Labour government feels like a Groundhog Day of slap downs for progressive ideas. Time to change tack?
The decision to expand Heathrow Airport raises serious questions for me about this current Labour government. After years of building evidence, making the case, and pushing for real climate action, the arguments against Heathrow expansion were dismissed. This isn’t the first time a well-evidenced, widely supported progressive policy or objection has been ignored.
It raises a fundamental question: should campaigners be rethinking how they engage with politics?
The prevailing wisdom is that effective campaigns must do three things:
Speak to a set of values, creating a clear authoritative or moral / ethical stance.
Identify what’s wrong with the world and highlight the risks of inaction.
Offer hope and solutions—showing people a better way forward.
I am starting to question whether that final step is really the responsibility of those of us who are outside the corridors of power.
If progressive ideas and solutions are likely to be met with intransigence, then is it time for some of us to change tack? Are hope and solutions, really the responsibility of campaigners?
Should Campaigners Always Be the Ones Providing Hope?
Hope is important. People need to believe change is possible. But what happens when politicians, the ones with the actual power to implement solutions, don’t act?
If campaigners keep presenting well-researched solutions, only to see them ignored, in favour of wealthy interests does that risk deepening public cynicism? Are we actually making things worse by encouraging hope and solutions, only to see them crushed?
This isn’t an argument for stoking directionless anger and nihilism (the right is doing a perfectly good job at that) , nor for abandoning solutions entirely. But perhaps the focus of campaigning work needs to shift. Instead of always offering hope, should campaigners be placing more emphasis on accountability? Should we be clearer about where responsibility lies and the real-world consequences of inaction?
If people feel let down by politics, should campaigners be meeting those people where they are—acknowledging their frustration—before trying to reintroduce optimism?
Labour’s need for renewal
At some point during this parliament - possibly earlier than many would have predicted - this Labour government is going to have to renew itself.
The conventional wisdom from Westminster insiders I’ve spoken to suggests that 18 months to two years out from a general election is the moment governments look to re-equip themselves with new ideas, new personnel, new strategy etc. Looking at the polls, it’s hard to see this government waiting until 2027 to start this process. In any case 2027 is just two years away.
That’s not a long time in campaigning strategy terms, so now really feels like the moment for campaigners to take stock.
One thing progressives should start with is an analysis of which backbench Labour MPs are in the most politically vulnerable position. Which MPs have the biggest incentive to make the government change course and what kinds of voters have the power to influence those MPs?
Audiences
A constituency I feel is being overlooked by the left and by Labour, is “Stevenage Woman”—this is a catch-all for disenchanted, suburban voters, who are economically left wing and socially liberal but disengaged.
These voters are often written off as unreachable because they don’t engage with traditional news media or politics. I’ve heard talk that it takes at least five or six times for these voters to engage with a political message.
But are they completely unreachable? They may be disconnected from politics as it’s currently presented, but I guarantee such people remain engaged with the world— physically via their smartphones and emotionally through the frustrations of daily life they share with the rest of us.
I suspect the real barrier to reaching these voters lies in understanding the right cognitive entry point to them. It’s pointless trying to reach them using traditional media alone still less, with policy or political messaging.
The entry point to these voters starts with understanding their emotional lives. By definition such people currently do not know what need they have for political solutions. Therefore, the immediate campaigning objective should be to cultivate the seeds of an intent to at least consider the role that politics or economics play in fomenting and solving their everyday problems.
As campaigners we need to think about how to reach these people. That means dropping our upstream concerns with policy and technical knowledge (it means putting hope on hold) and coming down stream to think about the emotions this audience is experiencing right now: their frustrations, the things that bother them, the issues that resonate with them. Only by understanding these things can we develop the language and messaging needed to speak to those frustrations in a way that hopefully generates an intent to contemplate re-engaging with politics.
This is the job of public attitudes research - in particular a programme of qualitative, focus group-led research.
More proactively I think there’s a big role to be filled by more effective use of digital platforms here too. More thinking about the type of not obviously political messaging likely to stop disengaged people from scrolling away from progressive content on Tik Tok and Reels.
Turning Frustration Into Political Action
One thing that seems undeniable is that many people in this country feel frustrated. They see problems around them and feel powerless to change them. They may not articulate this in traditional political terms, but the underlying sentiment is clear.
So how can campaigners connect with that frustration in a productive way? Should the first step be simply acknowledging people’s discontent, rather than immediately offering solutions? If the goal is to engage the disengaged, do campaigns need to first create a sense of recognition—helping people see that their frustrations are not just personal but part of a larger pattern?
This is something that the the far right is already successfully doing, they have mastered the art of taking everyday frustrations and providing culture war explanations for them.
What Comes Next?
None of the questions raised in this blog have simple answers, but I feel the questions they are worth asking. If politicians refuse to a provide concrete basis for hope, should campaigners continue to take on that role? Or should the focus be on shifting incentives—so that those in power feel a greater urgency to act?
What does an effective campaign look like in a political climate where trust is low and frustration is high? How do we turn disengagement into action? And ultimately, how do we make sure that hope isn’t just a message—but something that actually leads to change?
So many questions, but it feels more urgent than ever that we seek answers to them now.