Kicking off 2025 with Hope, Not Hate

Reform UK Members of Parliament in five different constituencies. The second biggest party membership in Britain, with 170,000 members. Polls showing them ahead of Labour in the UK, tied with Labour in Wales and kingmakers in Scotland. And all of this is before any serious influx of cash from their billionaire backers, which would allow them to develop proper on the ground infrastructure.

The new right in Britain is on the march, which is why yesterday Campaign Lab hosted our first ever collaborative Hack Day in cooperation with Hope Not Hate, who do incredible work organising against the far right in our communities up and down the country.

We were thrilled to see so many people from our community show up to help Hope Not Hate solve the problems that matter - with 50+ participants from all over the country, our community made a strong start in 2025, and we started as we mean to continue. From everyone at Campaign Lab and Hope Not Hate, we’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who showed up and lent their time and expertise to the fight against the new right.

We all know the right can win with money, while progressives win with people. This is why the efficient use of data and intelligence in informing resource allocation is so important. Hope Not Hate came to us with two broad kinds of problem: those that involved the identifying, structuring and analysing of data, and those which involved gathering data about the ways the new right organise.

One interesting project from the day was the building of a byelection early warning system that scans upcoming byelections and flags any which are likely to be fertile ground for Reform. All of the data needed to do this are already publicly available; collating that data and using it effectively is the task. But tools like this enable progressives to direct their resources in the most efficient possible manner, and that makes a difference.

There is plenty of scope to make our efforts against the far right both more efficient and more effective by the innovative use of technology. If your organisation believes in fighting for a more progressive Britain and is constrained by tech soluble bottlenecks, then we want to hear from you - please submit individual challenges here or get in touch at tim@campaignlab.uk.