📜 Be pragmatic about the political reality

Be pragmatic about the political reality

When you’re trying to push something through, you can face real resistance if the policy you’re fighting for significantly alienates one faction within a party. So, in our case, we struggled to push policy through because the Conservative Party was a bit fractured—there was a real sense of disunity and we were at the back end of a bumpy Parliament. And if you’re not coming in with a united front, you don’t have the collective strength to push through changes, even when some of us thought they were the right move. For those wanting to influence policy, you have to be pragmatic about the political realities on the ground. 

Focus on the political narrative

A cohesive narrative about why you’re advocating for the policies you’re representing will give you a significant edge. You can have the best ideas, but if you can’t communicate them in a way that resonates with people—whether it’s the public, parliamentarians, or senior leaders in government—it’s not going anywhere. 

Tie the narrative to government priorities - not your own

My role was to help align proposed policies with our overarching goals, and every part of the communications plan had to reinforce this central theme. We also had to carefully plan how and when we announced policies to ensure key stakeholders felt involved and heard. A misstep in this process could shift the narrative and force us onto the defensive. One of the things that would frustrate us was if policy got to us at Number 10, but none of the work on how it would be announced or how it tied into government priorities had been done.