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| Building Irresistible Public Demand for Real Democratic ChangeOpen Britain’s Reflections on 2025 |
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| Dear John,
If you’re ready to wave goodbye to 2025, you’re not alone. From Donald Trump’s autocratic return to power to Nigel Farage’s surge in the UK, alongside a rising tide of racist extremism, deepening division, a seemingly never ending cost-of-living crisis and a government contending with historic distrust and disillusionment, it’s been a hard year to say the least.
Many of our supporters made it abundantly clear on our recent survey (full results breakdown forthcoming) that 2025 was not a year that inspired much hope. The future of Britain, Europe, and the United States seems mired in uncertainty. Clearly there are huge challenges ahead for those of us who still believe in democracy, fairness, and accountability.
But while newsfeeds and headlines thrive on outrage and despair, Open Britain has been focused on the slower, harder work of turning democratic reform into a political reality. This year, we’ve made real progress towards three core objectives: Helping ordinary people understand what’s going wrong in our politics - from the threat posed by Farage and the far-right to the erosion of civil liberties - and showing what meaningful change could look like
Persuading parliamentarians of the need to stand up and defend, strengthen, and renew our democracy
Providing ordinary people with tools and messages needed to communicate with - and apply pressure to - their MPs.
Beneath the noise, we’ve been building momentum. And believe it or not, we’re convinced that 2026 could be a positive year. Most importantly, know that we couldn’t have done any of it without you.
Here’s what your support helped us achieve in 2025: |
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We built the biggest democracy campaign group in Parliament
We designed, launched, and built the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Fair Elections - the largest such advocacy group inside Parliament. Alongside our partners at Fair Vote UK, we created a serious, cross-party forum for MPs and Peers concerned about the collapse of trust in British politics - and helped establish a durable parliamentary power base for the hard work ahead.
In 2025, MPs finally started speaking our language. Across party lines, parliamentarians are now openly discussing the need to restore trust in politics, the corrosive role of dark money and dodgy data, and the reality that our broken First-Past-the-Post system needs fixing. Crucially, that conversation has increasingly converged around a clear, workable solution: an independent National Commission on Electoral Reform (NCER).
And we didn’t just CALL for an NCER…we published robust Terms of Reference - endorsed by colleagues across the sector and notable academics - setting out its purpose, structure and timeline - effectively providing government with a ready-to-go blueprint for turning this long overdue reform into reality.
Beyond electoral systems, we also published the APPG’s Free But Not Fair report, now a key reference point in debates about the health of UK elections. The report exposed not only the failures of FPTP, but the long-ignored loopholes in campaign finance law that risk foreign interference and undue influence, alongside the unchecked role of powerful digital platforms in spreading hate, division, and disinformation.
And this is the point. We didn’t build the APPG simply to host meetings or publish reports - as important as those can be. We built it to be a permanent engine of reform advocacy inside Parliament, making our agenda hard to ignore and easier to act on.
As the APPG enters its next phase, Open Britain and Fair Vote UK will be leaving day-to-day operations in the capable hands of friends in the sector, while we focus our energies on persuading Parliament as a whole to implement the reform we so desperately need, and on building the irresistible public demand for change needed to finally turn recommendations into laws… which brings us to our next achievement. |
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| | We’ve put key democracy questions on the agenda for the forthcoming Elections Bill
With an Elections Bill expected in the new year, we - once again alongside Fair Vote UK - have brought together the constellation of organisations who share our reform priorities to maximise collective impact when legislation is published. By working together, we can ensure resources are used efficiently to cover all bases, avoid duplication, and ensure the government hears a clear, coherent case for meaningful democratic reform.
We’ve also worked to engage with officials and Ministerial aides, setting out the issues that matter most to our team, our supporters and our allies. That has included highlighting specific loopholes in campaign finance law, the risks they pose to trust in elections, and practical, workable recommendations for how they could be addressed in legislation.
In short, when the Elections Bill arrives, it won’t land out of the blue or into a vacuum. It will land into a Parliament and a civil society landscape that is informed, aligned, ready to engage - and willing to push the Government hard for better policy. |
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| | We built a powerful new mass communications platform
Earlier this year, we launched Ugly Politix - a no-nonsense free-for-everyone analysis channel on Substack designed to cut through the noise and expose what’s really driving Britain’s broken politics. It’s still in its early stages, but we’ve been absolutely blown away by its rapid success.
We’ve appeared regularly in Substack’s top 30 ‘World Politics’ chart (one week making #12!) and we’ve seen explosive growth in subscribers, with our articles regularly getting hundreds of likes and comments. A huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to this success.
We’re proud to be rubbing shoulders with fantastic blogs like Peter Geoghegan’s Democracy For Sale, Bear’s hard-hitting Bearly Politics and the ever insightful ‘debunking’ from Emma Monk. We have big plans for Ugly Politix. We hope one day we can grow it to a scale that offers real pushback against the likes of prolific right-wing agitator Matthew Goodwin (who, sadly, still dominates the platform).
We also sent over 37,000,000 emails this year (the most ever), and we’ve had fantastic engagement from you, our brilliant community of supporters. We’ve expanded our work on social media, shifting away from the toxicity of ‘X’ and towards the more wholesome debate taking place on BlueSky. Again, we have big plans on that front too.
We’re incredibly grateful that so many people believe in our mission to educate and inform, and are willing to support us to see it achieved. Take a look below at what Substack readers are saying about UglyPolitix. |
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| “There has to be a counter voice to the deluge of fake news coming from the American fascist right.” – Ugly Politix subscriber
“I support your work because, having been born in 1934, I remember the Second World War and particularly the filmed discovery of the Nazi extermination camps: Sadly such atrocities did not end with Nuremberg.” – Ugly Politix subscriber
“It enlarges my view of what’s going on – essential because it affects me!” – Ugly Politix subscriber
“I look forward to reading your articles.” – Ugly Politix subscriber |
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| | We built a dynamic new online tool that’s boosting activism (and not just ours)
ActionStorm is our mass-participation campaigning platform, designed to convert public frustration into real, tangible action. At a time when the gulf between elected representatives and ordinary people feels wider than ever, politics can often feel like shouting into the void.
That’s exactly why we’re building it.
Alongside ActionStorm’s established petition tool, we launched ActionMail in 2025 - a new way for supporters to contact their MPs on issues they care about. Instead of forcing everyone to use the same pre-written template, ActionMail enables supporters to write personalised, custom letters to their MP, shaped around the campaign elements most important to them.
The result is something genuinely powerful: MPs hear from thousands of constituents at once, but in their own words, reflecting real concerns rather than copy-and-paste campaigns. It makes participation easier and messages much harder to ignore.
We’ve already used ActionStorm and ActionMail to drive real impact: Earlier this year, we got more than 6,000 people to write to their MPs asking them to affirm their commitment to keeping the UK in the European Convention on Human Rights, reaching 99% of MPs.
41,000 people signed a petition urging the Speaker of the House to refuse Donald Trump the privilege of addressing Parliament.
And we got nearly 18,000 people to support the call for a National Commission for Electoral Reform when it was announced.
And of course, we’re not the only ones using it. ActionStorm is available to all grassroots organisations, local councillors, and ordinary people to launch their own campaigns: with objectives ranging from protecting British food and agricultural standards post-Brexit to calling on companies to stop advertising on GB News.
We’re very excited about what this free-to-use people-powered platform will achieve in 2026, especially with key legislation coming down the pipeline. It’s clear that people are in desperate need of a way to make their voices heard…and we’re here to help. |
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| | We’ve used our platform to hold Nigel Farage’s feet to the fire and counter far-right disinformation
Over the course of the year, a number of right-wing campaigns have sought to divide communities across Britain. We’ve used our email and Substack channels to push back, unpacking and shedding light on the issues at hand: We exposed Farage’s faux outrage at the BBC for what it is: a coordinated assault on public broadcasting spearheaded by Donald Trump and his UK flunkeys, led by Nigel Farage. They would prefer we all existed in a permanent GB News political hall of mirrors, where - conveniently - people like them are never asked hard questions or held accountable.
We’ve called out the far-right’s anti-British fear-mongering about London and London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, calling for the States to ‘liberate’ our cities from crime and multiculturalism.
We’ve pushed back on the general demonisation of migrants and minorities which has become terrifyingly commonplace in Britain today. The extreme racism - including actual neo-Nazi talking points - seeping into mainstream politics has no place in a democratic, liberal and open Britain.
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| | Taken together, these achievements tell a clear story. In a year when much of politics broke down, we helped move democratic reform out of the abstract and into the real world - into Parliament, into public debate, and into the hands of people who want change.
That work matters because 2026 is going to be decisive.
An Elections Bill is coming. The debate about trust, money, and foreign interference in our politics is coming to a head. The forces that benefit from a broken system are mobilising - and so must we who believe Britain’s democracy can be fairer, more effective, and more accountable.
Open Britain is ready to meet that moment. We have the network, the credibility, and the momentum to help shape what comes next. But we have to remind you that this small and dedicated team completely relies on your support to make this all happen.
That’s why, if you’re able, we’re asking you to consider keeping us fighting by supporting this movement.
Monthly support, in particular, gives us something invaluable: stability. It allows us to plan ahead, respond quickly to events, and sustain the long, patient work of persuading parliamentarians, informing the public, and empowering people to hold power to account.
Even a small monthly contribution helps ensure that when the window for real change opens in 2026, Open Britain is there - positioned, resourced, and ready to push for the changes our democracy so urgently needs.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your support makes a difference, the achievements you’ve just read about are your answer. |
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| | All the best – and wishing you a very Happy Christmas on behalf of the whole team.
Mark Kieran CEO, Open Britain
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