Insight Type: Insight

26th March 2026

Employees across the UK recognise the importance of business planning for disruption but have little confidence that their workplace is prepared for the challenges which price shocks, inflation, tariffs and other instabilities present.

This Resilience Gap is explored in a new report from Lodestone Communications and VP Comms. Resilience Redefined, launched on the 26th March 2026 at the RSA in London, and interviewed business leaders across multiple sectors, as well as polling 1,234 employees at businesses across the country to understand their concerns about current and future threats such as economic shocks, supply chain issues, climate-related disruption and AI adoption. To find out more about how your organisation can become more resilient, improve foresight on risks and opportunities and improve internal communications.

Of the employees surveyed:

• Over 80% recognised that it is very or quite important for their organisation to invest in long-term planning and resilience.
• However, fewer than 1 in 5 felt that their organisation was doing enough to build resilience for external risks from a range of sources.
• Only half of employees knew whether their organisation had any sort of long-term strategic plan in place, with the majority of those which do exist covering five years or less into the future.
• Almost 80% felt their organisation needed to do more to communicate its long-term strategy.

In the face of such a Resilience Gap, we interviewed a number of ‘New Era leaders’, executives leading the way on resilience, including Harriet Lamb, CEO of the Green Party, Peter Williamson, Policy Director of Automate UK and Emma Wright, Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP to discuss best practice in the face of these challenges, including communicating existing plans to employees on a regular basis.

The report takes a deep dive into their recommendations of how to bridge the Resilience Gap, highlighting the importance not just of a deep strategic vision, built on an expansive definition of resilience, incorporating not just financial and cyber, but people and climate. Those interviewed also highlighted the importance of horizon scanning the political, regulatory and policy risks and opportunities, and of building proactive anticipation into the DNA of your business.

The expert interviews also demonstrated the importance of developing a culture underpinned by human and emotional intelligence, to help address the gap between perception and action, with the aim of creating a world where, as Peter Stojanovic, editor of HotTopics, suggests in the report, “Resilience doesn’t mean fewer surprises. It means fewer people are shocked.

This afternoon, Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out the details of her second Budget. Reeves announced £26bn of taxation increases across property, income, and pension contributions, in order to fund measures to tackle cost-of-living challenges, boost welfare support, and expand the Treasury’s fiscal headroom.

The Chancellor called the Budget a move towards a “fairer, a stronger, a more secure Britain” – pointing out that it increases public spending whilst keeping within her self-imposed fiscal rules, by asking wealthier members of society to contribute more. She was criticised by Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch however, who accused the Chancellor of favouring benefits claimants at the expense of working people, whilst Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey warned “you can’t tax your way to growth.”

The Office for Budget Responsibility, who accidentally leaked key measures in the Budget earlier in the day, also set out revised growth forecasts for the UK. They announced real GDP is forecast to grow by 1.5% per year on average over the next five years, 0.3 percentage points slower than projected in March, due to lower underlying productivity growth. They also said borrowing is projected to fall from 4.5% of GDP in 2025-26 to 1.9% of GDP in 2030-31, but that debt will rise as a share of GDP from 95% of GDP this year and end the decade at 96% of GDP – two percentage points higher than projected in March.

A full list of announcements from today’s Budget is below.

With Rachel Reeves having now delivered her second Budget as Chancellor, there will be a certain amount of relief amongst Labour backbenchers that the period of speculation is finally over. The run-up to today’s speech has been unusually fraught and febrile, with numerous potential policies floated, only to then be withdrawn, and the OBR’s unprecedented though inadvertent leaking of key details only adding to the general air of a lack of control and coordination.

Any relief felt though, will have quickly turned to trepidation as to how the measures outlined will be received by the many and disparate audiences they need to satisfy. The MPs’ own constituents, whose dissatisfaction is clear from the polls; the markets who increasingly drive so much of the overall reaction to fiscal statements; and the businesses whose own frustrations with the uncertainty caused by the lengthy lead-in to the Budget have been made abundantly clear. And, of course, the reaction of those MPs themselves, whose own restlessness grows stronger by the day. All needed to see something in there that spoke to their concerns and their priorities.

The challenge for the Chancellor is that those priorities are often contradictory and conflicting. The lifting of the two-child benefit cap is, at one and the same time, a signal to Labour MPs of a commitment to the party’s ‘traditional values’, and a worrying sign of fiscal laxness to the markets. Those same markets may be reassured by Reeves’ focus on reinforcing her fiscal headroom through revenue raising measures, but those measures will also add to the overall tax burden falling on voters already losing faith in this government. These competing demands, and the desire to please – or, at least, not displease – so many differing groups, inevitably gave the Budget something of a bits and pieces feel, with lots of small ideas and policies, rather than one or two big, eye-catching moves.

But, despite this backdrop, the Chancellor, who can appear nervy at times, gave a buoyant and robust performance in the House, emphasising “her choices” of stability and security, and returning to the key Labour narrative of growth fuelled by significant investment in transport, energy, and housing. With the moves on welfare and the cost of living, increased spending on the NHS, and an attempt – through measures such as the ‘mansion tax’ on homes worth more than £2m – to ensure the greatest burden falls on those best able to bear it, there was much there for Labour backbenchers to cheer. Reeves will hope the mansion tax in particular is successful in placating the backbenches, as it risk burning political capital elsewhere, giving detractors a ready-made attack line in return for a comparatively tiny financial gain of £400m.

And the Labour benches duly gave Reeves a rowdy and relatively upbeat reception, encouraged, perhaps, by the large-scale political operation across the Westminster tearooms and corridors over recent days to bolster the mood and resilience of the Government’s own troops. In this sense then, it was a job well done on a day that had not started auspiciously. For its part, the response from the Opposition (the Conservatives that is, rather than Reform) homed in on a “Budget for Benefits Street paid for by working people” and the Chancellor’s many small-scale “distractions while she steals your wallet;” predictable attack lines, but which is not to say that they may not prove to be effective ones over time.

However, to trot out a tried and tested truism, the real reaction to the Budget, and its resulting success or otherwise, will only be known over the next few days, as the markets respond and the small print is combed through. Early signs from the City are inconclusive – a dip in housebuilders’ shares, for example, but a tentatively solid-to-positive position on bonds – and some patience will be required to see how it all settles out. Whether the Budget has also earned the government renewed patience and support amongst all those they’ve sought to target today – both within their own party and without – will similarly take time to become clear.

Lucy Powell possesses a quality that Keir Starmer lacks and which is vital to success in modern politics. Lucy Powell knows who she is and what she believes in. And it is on that basis that, this weekend, she secured her own, fresh mandate from the Labour membership.

Ignore political commentators pontificating on the low turnout or a myriad other excuses for the Prime Minister’s political failures. Keir Starmer put the full weight of the Labour machine behind his favoured candidate – Bridget Phillipson – and he lost. His allies at the top of the biggest affiliated trade unions failed to motivate their members to vote (thus the artificially low official turnout figures, which assumes an electorate comprised of many more voters than there are actual Labour members). Repeatedly putting Phillipson up as the Government spokesperson for the media round didn’t work (some, cruel, close observers claim it may even have lessened her chances). Allowing her to delay controversial policy announcements from her department (on special needs education, for example) made no difference and nor did allowing her to break collective responsibility on the two-child allowance.

Tommy Cooper is Caerphilly’s most famous son. Before his aunt bought him a magic set, before the fez and the act and the laughter, there was Caerphilly. And now Labour follows Cooper in a very public demise. Is it a blip? Or is it really proof that our two party system has now, truly, been administered the last rites?

Plaid Cymru, Wales’ left-wing nationalist party, won the Caerphilly by-election for a newly vacant Senedd seat. But they aren’t the only winners from last night. The race ended up being an existential – and vicious – battle between Plaid and Reform. Two outsider parties, neither of whom has a long track-record in government, fighting to represent a town that has always, always, voted Labour. Plaid came through, securing 47% of the vote versus Reform’s 36% – leaving Labour on just 11%.

What does this mean? Of course there are the local factors; Plaid ran a candidate who had stood, in the seat, in every available election since the eighties. He’s a popular and well known figure. And Plaid successfully convinced Caerphilly’s electorate that this was a two-horse race between The Party of Wales and The Party of Nigel. In the General Election, just over a year ago, tactical voting delivered part of Labour’s historic majority. In this election, it proved to be Labour’s undoing. A lot of voters will put their cross in any box, so long as it stops Farage. The significant eventual lead over Reform signals that while there is a very significant constituency for the emergent new-Right, there is (in many places) an even more compelling bloc of opposition. Caerphilly represents the latest sharpening of one of the most important emerging trends in British politics; the propensity of voters to switch their choice on the basis of who they do not want to represent them, rather than on who they might ideally wish to form a government.

Winning in a tactical voting election is much like performing a magic trick. It’s a confidence game. Meet the audience’s eye, talk them through the illusion, make sure they’re not watching your hands. It is to Plaid’s credit that they pulled it off – convincing Caerphilly that this was a straightforward choice between them, and Reform. And it renders visceral the central political argument at the heart of this struggling government.

Kemi Badenoch views this party conference – and today’s speech – as her opportunity to introduce herself to the country. Quite a lot of her colleagues complain that she’s had almost a year to do just that. And in that contradiction lies the nub of Kemi’s problem. She believes that slow and steady will win the race, many fellow Tories are pretty sure that – in a fast paced, social media world – the tortoise would never actually outpace the hare.

And so, in Manchester, a change of tack. The lady may be no more for turning than the famous predecessor whose dresses graced the near empty exhibition hall but she’s shown a bit of flex this week. Having stuck doggedly to a refusal to announce policies out of desperation for attention, Badenoch spent much of the week announcing policies out of desperation for attention. Mel Stride wants to pump demand in the housing market via NI rebates. Robert Jenrick wants to personally appoint judges. They all (kind of, if they have to) want to leave the ECHR. And Kemi wants to apply a set of ‘golden rules’ to the economy in order to deliver (alchemically) both ‘fiscal prudence’ and ‘billions of pounds of tax cuts’ – including the abolition of stamp duty, in naked mimicry of Osborne’s big, bold (election preventing) promises on inheritance tax.

Will it work? It sort of has to. This Conservative conference was as dead as everyone is telling you it was. And whilst that might not be wholly surprising for a party in year one of opposition, the dearth of businesses present was acknowledged on the ground – by senior party figures – as both disappointing and unnerving. Particularly given that the current Government is not exactly drowning in popularity. It is hard to deliver policies to ‘unlock growth’ or ‘back British business’ if a great many of those at the top of industry can’t be bothered to speak to you.

As delegates battle it out for seats on the train back from Labour Conference, there’s little doubt that Keir Starmer and his team consider their week in Liverpool a success. The open conflicts predicted by many politics-watchers were mostly smoothed over in the halls and bars of the Albert Dock. The leadership pitch that had been anticipated from Andy Burnham became more of a reverse ferret. MPs and the party faithful were given the red, Reform-baiting meat they had hoped for in a peppy and punchy Leader’s speech. Overcoming expectations is, so often in our politics, the primary metric and measure of success. Starmer managed it and should therefore be considered a genuine winner from conference season.

On the ground, the atmosphere was one of smiles for the cameras and whispered nervousness. Everyone was making an effort to get along and to signal confidence. But in the bars, in private rooms in restaurants, in snatched chats by the Mersey, there was also a lot of acknowledgement that the fundamentals haven’t changed, and the fundamentals are bad. Labour are currently polling at a level that would see them wiped-out come an election. Reform are finally reaching numbers that would see them in touching distance of governing alone (perhaps even with a significant majority). And in the coming months we will see some really big tests – a budget in the most difficult of circumstances, elections in Scotland and Wales, and the potential wipe-out of thousands of Labour councillors.

What this conference shows, then, is a level of steely determination that has proven more robust than many feared. No, the party doesn’t think that everything is fine or that they’re cruising towards a second term. But no, the party hasn’t given up yet. Whether the answer ends up being doubling down on Starmer or a change of tack is another argument for another day – but whichever way they go in the end, the Labour Party isn’t in a surrendering mood just yet.

Ed Davey is a very nice man. He is passably good at all manner of water sports, is famously a loving and devoted son, husband and father, knows how to lead a marching band and you’d really hate for him to be disappointed in you. Of all our current crop of party leaders, Ed Davey is the one with whom one imagines one would enjoy the pleasantest evening in a brasserie/gourmet pub.

None of the above is meant dismissively. Being nice and good and proper are all important things to be. And Ed Davey should be – indeed, gives one the vehement impression that he is – proud of who he is. That, however, is a different question to that of whether one has much purpose as the leader of a political party. Despite having more MPs than Nigel Farage (by a factor of more than ten), fewer headaches than Keir Starmer (by a factor of roughly eight hundred thousand) and more easy charm with the media than Kemi Badenoch (by a frankly unknowable factor), Ed Davey still, somehow, feels like a political talent in search of a point.

As with so much in our politics at the moment, Nigel Farage is on hand to provide the answer to the question mark that hovers perennially over the Liberal Democrats. This was not a speech primarily about what the Lib Dems would do in Government (despite that being a very plausible outcome of the next election) but rather what they would like to prevent Nigel Farage doing if he ever gets a sniff of Downing Street. Thus, today’s Leader’s speech was very much about what Lib Dem Britain is not, rather than what it might be. It is not Elon Musk. It is not flags being misused for political purposes. It is not draconian immigration laws or cruelty to children or to the old or the disabled. It is not, and emphatically so, Nigel Farage. And so, if one does not like Elon Musk, badly used flags, cruelty or Nigel Farage – so the logic runs – it’s a Lib Dem Britain one ought to be voting for. The Reform leader’s response – well, characteristically lacking in emphatic niceness to be honest: “Just watching poor Ed Davey speak. He is obsessed with me. I am happy to pay for a psychiatrist.”

The faithful lapped it up, though. It spoke to them, and it spoke to an England (the Lib Dems are, really, a terrifically English party – spiritually) that they truly admire and believe in. There was much talk, this conference, of a ‘Davey Decade’. And who can blame them? He has made the Lib Dems Great Again – delivering them their greatest number of seats in a century and an easier night’s sleep than they’ve had in donkey’s years.

But… but… Ed Davey is a very nice man. But what if the Overton window has moved? What if Britain’s primordial instincts are rather more inclined to the naughty, than the nice, these days?

What is the Role?

The Deputy Leader role is a Labour Party position and since the resignation of Angela Rayner has been decoupled with the role of Deputy Prime Minister. It is an elected position where the PLP decide who is on the ballot. Trade unions, Constituency Labour Parties and Affiliates can then nominate candidates, with the process culminating in a vote of all Labour Party members. Historically it has been a powerful position but who wins will have a big impact on what role they play.

What is the process?

• A fast process was agreed by the NEC on Monday 8th September.
• First stage: To get on the ballot to members, candidates must secure at least 20% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) (80 nominations) by fellow MPs by Thursday 11th September at 5pm.
• Second stage: Once through the PLP threshold candidates must also receive nominations from at least 5% of CLPs (33) or at least 3 affiliates (at least 2 of which will be trade unions).
• Once candidates have passed both stages, a ballot of eligible electors will be done under the One Member One Vote method (OMOV).

Full timetable below:

Monday 8 September: Freeze date for elector eligibility

Tuesday 9 September: PLP nominations open

Wednesday 10 September: PLP candidate hustings

Thursday 11 September (17:00): PLP nominations close (candidates must secure at least 80 nominations to get on the ballot)

Friday 12 September (13:00): Deadline for validly nominated candidates to consent to nomination and submit statements for circulation to CLPs and affiliates

Saturday 13 September: CLP and affiliate nominations open

Saturday 27 September: Close of CLP and affiliate nominations

Saturday 27 September – Wednesday 1 October: There will be a hustings at Labour Party Conference (specific date TBA)

Sunday 5 October: Deadline to resolve disputes as to voter eligibility

Wednesday 8 October: Ballot Opens

Monday 20 October: Last date to reissue electronic ballots

Thursday 23 October (12:00): Ballot Closes

Saturday 25 October: Announcement of result

Stood outside the main hall of the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham where Reform held its summer conference at the weekend, two members discussed their views on the state of their Party: “we’ve been told we’re not allowed to upset people, screw that let’s upset people.” “That’s what we’re here for” the other quipped.

Whilst it is clear that the leadership of Reform want to professionalise their outfit, many in their ranks are still more comfortable with the beer hall rally they have been so used to over the last few years. So much so that during the controversial policy debates, there was an opportunity to take a photo with Nigel Farage in a completely separate part of the conference venue. This was evidently choreography, not coincidence.

Fundamentally, this is the identity crisis Reform is facing. Whilst Farage used his speech to try and establish them as a party of Government, there are certain things that they still can’t and won’t shake off. Lucy Connolly, convicted of stirring up racial hatred in the aftermath of the Southport attack, appeared on the main stage, as did controversial doctor Aseem Malhotra, who claimed an ‘eminent oncologist’ had said that the Covid vaccine was a ‘significant factor in the cancer of members of royal family’.

As they rise in the polls, how they navigate the wishes of their core base versus what the wider electorate want will be a delicate balancing act. Ahead of the last General Election, this was what Keir Starmer called his “ming vase strategy”. As they try and transform themselves – with the launch of the department for the preparation of government – will Farage and his acolytes exercise a similar type of strategic caution, and will that be enough for their membership?