It feels as though 2025 has been another tough, ugly year and worse than the last. Empowered by Trump, Musk and a large portion of the media, racism, misogyny, environmental destruction, fascism, cruelty and greed proudly strut the world stage, trampling the vulnerable and attempting to silence opposition.
It is tempting to disngage from this dystopia and I can only too well appreciate how weary so many of us are feeling and how depressed by the evidence that the dark forces have the money and the guns. But there are many more of us than there are of them. All that is needed is for us to rally and mobilise the decent majority to unite and say ‘not in our name.’ Simple, huh? It’s hard for many to appreciate what they’ve lost ’til it’s gone, but we must try. We urgently need positive visions of an alternative, achievable future not dominated by money and consumption.
So here are a few things things you could do in 2026 to help change the political, evironmental and societal direction of travel and preserve your own mental health.
Not in order of priority:
- Help ensure that your community gets to see the film to be made by the National Emergency Briefing on Climate and Nature and then demand your MP supports appropriate action. It’s far from being all gloom and doom. Instead, there’s a wealth of exciting, life-affirming action and investment which would benefit us all (well, maybe not fossil fuel companies!)
- Join/support campaigns for the essential modernisation of our voting system so that every vote counts. We are the only country in Europe bar Belarus (!) that relies on the two-party dominated first-past-the-post system which allows parties to be elected on big seat majorities but a minority of the votes cast. Sign up to news from Make Votes Matter, Open Britain (running the APPG on fair voting), The Electoral Reform Society.
- Absent electoral reform, if you live in a constituency where there is a risk that the progressive vote is split allowing a Reform UK win, start thinking now about running a political primary to unite voters behind one challenger candidate. Look out for the book on how to do it (which you can help fund), coming out in March/April 2026.
- Stand up for refugees and asylum seekers. Support the work of, amongst others, Hope not hate, Care4Calais, Refugee Council. Arm yourself with facts to counter the endless lies designed to foster hatred and resentment.
- Join Common Ground Org and start having positive conversations on the street with the aid of a democracy meter, boosting the morale of those who feel cowed into silence by the shouty right and gently challenging those who have gone down the Reform UK rabbit hole.
- Sign up for information on tactical voting on local and national elections from The Movement Forward and StopReformUK.vote.
- Read Rob Hopkins’ uplifting book, ‘How to Fall in Love with the Future’, and get a healthy dose of positivity to sustain you! Reviewed here.
- Quit X, if you haven’t already. The bad guys don’t need any more of our energy, attention or money!
- Encourage a young person you know (or are!!) to enter the Future Journalist competition, which runs until midnight 22 Feb 2026.
- Write for us! We have lost our Cornwall editor to full time Green politics and our Somerset editor to eco and community projects, so we are especially keen to hear from these two counties. We are all volunteers, so there’s no money, I am afraid, but we have a great team and we’re deeply committed to telling it like it is. We’ll give you plenty of support and encouragement if you are new to citizen journalism!
- Yes, the list goes all the way up to 11… Please share the link to West Country voices with your friends and family. You are our distribution network, especially now that the algorithms tend to suppress progressive voices.
Wishing all our readers a very Happy Christmas and New Year. Let’s hope it’s a better one for people, politics and the planet!
