Conference season 2025: Seven signals from a weary political nation
October 10, 2025
by Jon Rhodes
However they tried to dress it up, this year’s party conferences were marked less by renewal than by restlessness. From Bournemouth to Manchester to Liverpool, the national mood felt brittle- tired of promises, wary of politics and unconvinced that anyone, in power or opposition, has any real answers. With the May 2026 local and mayoral elections already in view, every leader was trying to look relevant, credible and in touch with a public that seems to have stopped listening. What emerged was not a clash of ideas, but a portrait of a political system running on nervous energy.
Fear and fatigue
All the conferences were, in different ways, dominated by anxiety rather than ambition.
Labour, despite its commanding majority, wrestled with the fear of losing authority too soon – keenly aware that its advantage in Parliament has never translated into public affection. The Conservatives grappled with irrelevance and loss of identity after a historic defeat, still unable to fully adjust to opposition and decide whether to try and oppose the government, adapt or simply survive.
Reform kicked off the conference season by channelling public anger with trademark bombast, but also revealed its limits. Beyond protest politics, Farage’s movement looked short of appearing as a government in-waiting with sufficient policy depth and discipline. The party is now consistently leading national polls with figures above 30%, but there are questions about the solidity of that support – more a protest signal than a settled allegiance. The party’s rise certainly captures public frustration, but translating that into turnout, organisation and discipline at the ballot box remains a major uncertainty.
The Lib Dems and Greens, meanwhile, fretted that their parliamentary footholds might again be squeezed by tactical voting and a polarised two-party framework leaving little room for their agendas to cut through.
Across all the conferences, a national fatigue with politics itself was palpable – not just dissatisfaction with the parties, but with the very idea that politics can make a difference.
Migration and identity politics recast
Migration was the ‘live rail’ at every conference, but the battle lines are subtly shifting.
Labour introduced a noticeably harder tone. New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood promised longer qualifying periods, tougher rules and stricter enforcement, showing how far the centre of gravity has moved. Reform, for its part, demanded more radical measures still: an Australian-style cap, an end to indefinite leave to remain status, an end to family reunion for non-citizens and a referendum to enshrine migration limits into law. Farage’s strategy is clear – keep the issue burning, force both Labour and the Tories to react and claim ownership of the public’s discontent towards high rates of immigration. The Conservatives, now without the levers of office, struggled to find a distinct note between “control” and “compassion”, finding themselves unable to cut through against Reform’s ownership of immigration on the right. Even the usually pro-migration SNP shifted tone, talking of “managed openness” – a rhetorical step away from its previous liberal framing. Migration has become cemented as a mainstream political issue.
The return of the economy
Migration may be the loudest issue on the agenda, but the economy is back at the core of political identity – and the centre ground, though crowded, is where everyone is now heading.
Labour doubled down on fiscal caution, making “slow reform” its new orthodoxy. Rachel Reeves’s insistence on market credibility has become the anchor of the government’s economic strategy. The Conservatives, meanwhile, spoke of “serious conservatism” and “grown-up opposition,” rediscovering “enterprise” as their last usable brand asset, portraying themselves as pro-business and austere on public spending to contrast with Labour and Reform.
Reform UK, sensing that economic credibility is the next threshold it must cross, is trying to rebrand its insurgency as a “low-tax realignment” – appealing to, once solidly Tory, small business owners and the self-employed. The Lib Dems offered competence and care – “balance the books, invest in people” — while the Greens highlighted eye-catching spending pledges in an attempt to attract voters from Labour’s disillusioned left-flank.
There is a glimmer of hope here, that Britain is not becoming more polarised. The parties all recognise that a winning majority still sits in the pragmatic political centre. The deeper problem is political faith, or more accurately lack of it. Voters are not divided on the economic stability that they want so much as unconvinced that anyone in Westminster can deliver it. Cynicism, not ideology, is now the defining deficit of British politics.
Climate and the politics of pragmatism
Climate politics has shifted from a tone of moral urgency to managerial realism.
Labour now frames net zero as “jobs and growth,” stripping away the emotive language of crusade. The Conservatives went further, proposing to loosen Climate Act targets and adopt a “clean but cheap” mantra designed to placate cost-of-living anxieties related to the UK’s net zero transition. Even within their own ranks, the mood was divided: Theresa May warned it was “wrong and short-sighted” to throw away the framework she introduced, while Boris Johnson struck a different note — admitting “perhaps we went too far, too fast.”
Reform UK, of course, supported scrapping net-zero commitments altogether, while the SNP tried to balance its industrial base and North Sea oil and gas interests with independence rhetoric.
The most striking challenge, however, came from Labour’s own flank. Unite’s Sharon Graham publicly called for Ed Miliband’s resignation following oil and gas job losses, blasting “over-ambitious green targets” for putting workers at risk. Five years ago, when cross-party consensus on climate measures was near unbreakable, no union leader would have dared say that.
The Greens, isolated but defiant, accused the main parties of betrayal and restated their “eco-populist” agenda, but their moral case now stands almost alone. The politics of the environment is no longer about saving the planet; it’s about saving face – through jobs, investment and local pay-offs.
Crisis of leadership: The search for renewal
Every conference was haunted by questions of succession – not as speculation about the distant future, but as a live test of who can still command authority in an anxious political landscape.
Labour arrived in Liverpool with Keir Starmer’s leadership being openly questioned and popular Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham all over the airwaves, testing the boundaries of party loyalty. By the week’s end, Starmer had steadied the ship and reasserted control. He saw off Burnham’s challenge, at least for now, and outperformed expectations – leaving Liverpool stronger, more defiant, and having shown members that he still has the fight in him. Yet the sense of fragility lingers: his authority is secure but not yet unshakeable, and Labour’s unity still feels rooted more in discipline rather than enthusiasm.
Kemi Badenoch faced similar tests in Manchester. Her first conference as leader was a chance to show she could unite the party, define its direction, and project seriousness after a year of drift. She, too, left stronger than she arrived, having held the line against Robert Jenrick’s insurgent “real conservatism”, and with her signature stamp duty abolition policy grabbing welcome positive media attention. Jenrick damaged himself with ill-judged remarks about Handsworth in Birmingham, while Badenoch emerged sharper and more assured. But she is not yet untouchable: the issue of how to deal with Reform remains, and her grip on the party’s future is firm but far from secure, with an expected drubbing in the local elections next year.
Reform, meanwhile, remains a one-man brand; the closer it edges towards real power, the clearer the vacuum behind Nigel Farage becomes. Beyond his personal charisma, there is little sense of who would actually run a Reform government, or whether the party could survive his departure intact with no clear successor.
Across the spectrum, Britain feels between eras – post-Johnson, post-Corbyn, post-Brexit – but still waiting for its next generation of political leaders to step up. Leadership today is less about vision or ideology, and more about stamina: who can survive the grind long enough to inherit a weary electorate’s trust.
Tactical Britain
In the bars, coffee shops and ubiquitous sponsored “lounges” of the modern party conference, politicians and apparatchiks of all stripes were quietly gaming out the 2029 General Election; an election many now expect to be dominated not by loyalty, but by tactics.
Labour’s incumbency, with more than 400 seats, and Reform’s insurgency make them the two natural poles in this new landscape. Starmer’s implicit strategy is already clear: frame 2029 as an “anyone-but-Nigel” election, then unite progressives, pragmatists and risk-averse centrists under a single defensive banner.
For Reform, the choice is more existential. Does it immediately take the fight directly to Labour, pitching itself as the true alternative to the political establishment, or finish the job of crushing the Conservatives first? Its answer may decide whether the Tories are simply wounded or wiped out.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both face the same brutal arithmetic. In a system where tactical voting reigns, it is vital to be seen as one of the “top two” parties. For now, neither is. The Tories talk about recovery; the Lib Dems about relevance. Both risk being squeezed between the gravitational pull of Labour and Reform.
Politics now resembles a chessboard of survival strategies more than a contest of visions; a country of voters who know how to play the system better than those who built it.
What This Means for Business
Across all conferences, the message for business was strikingly consistent: politics is under pressure to deliver – visibly, quickly and within tight fiscal and political limits. Competence, not vision, is the new currency of credibility.
For Labour, the challenge is to show that “slow reform” can still produce tangible results without losing the trust of the financial markets. For the Conservatives, relevance is the new battleground. They have pitched a pro-business agenda based on experience and pragmatism, but they must show they can be constructive rather than purely oppositional. Meanwhile Reform UK is testing whether its anti-establishment energy can translate into a governing proposition; one that business can engage with, rather than be wary of.
Next month’s Budget will be a test for all three. For Labour, it will show whether prudence can coexist with progress; for the opposition parties, it will show whether they can offer credible alternatives rather than just commentary and unconstructive opposition.
The lesson for business is simple: engage now, while policy is still fluid and delivery teams are under pressure to prove results. The window for shaping ideas before they harden into fiscal constraints or political red lines is open. Businesses that come forward with solutions framed around delivery, partnership and credibility will be seen as part of the answer. Those who wait for stability may discover that, in this political cycle, volatility is the new normal.
