The Hope Index 2025 - Personal vs Country
Over the last five years we have been tracking levels of hope across the UK. We believe this is an important topic to study because it helps us understand how the underlying mood of the public is changing over time. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, we have seen the nation’s mood swing from hopeful to uncertain as we’ve lived though the arrival and ending of the pandemic, a rolling cost-of-living crisis and multiple Prime Ministers and Governments struggling to seize the agenda and lead.
Throughout this research we’ve watched as one big theme has played out: The public are consistently significantly more hopeful about prospects for themselves and their communities over the year ahead than they are about those for the country. This matters because it reinforces what we see in other research. That trust in Governments, national institutions, major corporations and the media is worryingly low. And this lack of trust and deeply engrained scepticism about the contribution these organisations can and do make is feeding an underlying sense that they simply don’t matter any more.
Over the coming years, this is a challenge for whoever is in power. The latest edition of 5654’s Hope Index shows older, male voters in the North make-up a significant number of Labour-Reform switchers – and that these people are significantly more likely to say they are pessimistic about the UK’s future. Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger, urban, Labour-leaning voters say they are more optimistic about lies ahead over the coming 12 months. And when you ask the public about the issues they believe could make the greatest contribution to hope they say they care most about the NHS and the cost-of-living. Economic growth often features as the number three issue – but significantly lower by comparison, underlining the findings of our work with the Labour Growth Group that the Government should “campaign on cost and govern for growth”.
Big businesses need to understand these trends too. These people are customers, employees and commentators for corporates and brands. Their beliefs and decisions matter to your commercial success.
More fundamentally, levels of net hope are down 4% vs 2024. But it would be a mistake to interpret this drop as a minor change. Look further and the data shows that when asked specifically about overall hope for “the lives of people across the UK in the coming year”, net hopefulness falls to 11.9% - down from an already low 20% in 2024. By comparison 48% and 36% of those polled (net) say they feel hopeful about their own prospects, and those of their communities, respectively.
This is perhaps further evidence of the atomisation of society and politics we are seeing across the board. People view the world from the people and places they are most connected to first. And this should matter to businesses and brands too. We are seeing across our work that localised, authentic storytelling is increasingly powerful – and that national, generalised messaging can have much lower impact.
The game today is to build support for your organisation across the audiences that matter to your commercial success. It’s always been the case that whoever these audiences may be, reaching them where they are and communicating with the ideas and language they understand is the only way to achieve this goal. This research further underlines the importance of this approach, particularly in a world where national hope appears to be approaching zero. Perhaps the only way to build it is to start from the ground up.