As 2025 draws to a close, our experts reflect on some of the moments that have defined the year across corporate communications, public affairs, digital, climate and nature and the media.
Trump and the tech bosses – Corporate communications – Charlotte Wilkins Smith, Director
The standout moment of the year for me, personally, came just 20 days in, but it exposed a profound shift in the world order, and a new inflection point between politics and business.
President Donald Trump’s (second) inauguration in January naturally had all eyes on it, but it was the guest list and strategic placement of certain guests that raised eyebrows.
Seats usually reserved for family and friends were occupied by the architects of modern technology: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Sundar Pichai. Wealth has always bought proximity, but this felt like s significant moment of intent – a new type of power, rooted in platforms and data, rather than traditional political machinery.
Now, 12 months on, we must ask whether it was just a bird’s eye view of the action or did the golden seat unlock real access and influence? Trump’s confrontational stance toward the EU over its digital services rules perceived as disadvantaging tech groups like Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and X, followed by executive orders, including December’s blocking states from implementing their own AI laws, suggests it may have done.
Labour’s telling U-turn – Public affairs – Nathalie Tamam, Director
What’s been the defining political moment of the year? As the government limps towards Christmas – just 18 months after a historic landslide – there’s no shortage of contenders. The forced reshuffle; the accidental hit job on Health Secretary Wes Streeting; the Budget that was rolled out, rolled back, then rolled over. All bruising in their own right.
But the real turning point was the U-turn on the June 2025 welfare reforms. It was the moment a deeper truth became impossible to ignore: this is a government that cannot reliably govern.
Confronted with a rebellion of more than 100 Labour MPs over disability benefit changes, the leadership was forced into frantic concessions. What should have been a signature show of fiscal discipline instead exposed something more fundamental – a government politically and ideologically boxed in. Welfare was the flashpoint, but the same pattern now stretches across spending, migration, farming.
For businesses, the implications are clear. First, policy is far more fluid than the majority suggests; positions can shift late under internal or external pressure. Second, backbenchers matter, the Parliamentary Labour Party has shown it can shape, stall or sink proposals. And finally, a risk-averse ministerial team is more sensitive than ever to reputational pressure.
In a government defined by caution and course-correction, those who offer political cover will shape the outcomes.
Facebook’s staying power – Digital – Mark Wainwright, Director
Mark Zuckerberg appears on screen, glow up in full effect. He announces Meta’s plan to ditch fact-checkers and replace them with X-style community notes. He frames it as a return to Meta’s roots, removing “censorship” and “political bias”.
It’s a very 2025 move, echoing the wider corporate retreat from DE&I for favour with the current US administration.
Cue the thinkpieces. Prophecies of chaos and advertisers fleeing Meta en masse.
Full disclosure: I wrote one of those pieces. But I hedged. I included the chance that the Meta free speech fact-checking furore would fizzle out. That six months later, no one would care.
And that hedge mattered. Because, like so many breathless digital comms predictions, the big Meta shift never really arrived.
Just as TikTok never actually got banned in the US. Just as Bluesky didn’t dethrone X to become the West’s de facto microblogging platform.
Instead, the landscape looks remarkably familiar. LinkedIn still dominates for comms and corporate affairs. Podcasts, Substack and “individual journalism” grow in influence yet remain undervalued. X is still useful, but only for monitoring and crisis tracking.
The lesson for comms teams is unchanged: ignore the spikes. Follow the trends. Focus on what endures.
The trouble with transition – Climate & Nature – Andy Payne, Partner
2025 marked a fork-in-the-road moment for climate action. Political consensus fractured just as the scientific and economic impacts became impossible to ignore. Extreme weather moved from future risk to lived reality, reshaping costs, confidence and capacity across the global economy.
Yet while politics polarised and the UK’s climate consensus weakened, the real economy kept moving. Investment continued to flow into clean energy and climate technologies, with renewables again attracting roughly twice the capital committed to new fossil infrastructure. Businesses respond to risk and opportunity, and to the rising price of inaction, not to political rhetoric.
This divergence defined the year and is likely to deepen in 2026. Opposition to climate action focuses not on denial but on a compelling frame – the transition is unaffordable and/or inconvenient. That case will continue to land while too few credible voices explain the upside in ways that resonate beyond the climate bubble.
Closing this gap is the task for 2026. It will require leadership from business not just in delivery but in narrative. If those with the clearest view of risk stay quiet, others will define the transition as a cost, when the greater cost is failing to act.
A shifting landscape – Media – Jonathan Blake, Director
In a turbulent year for UK media, marked by takeovers and further proliferation (which prominent journalist doesn’t have their own Substack or podcast now?) – the double resignation at the top of the BBC stands out.
I know from experience that crises at the corporation come and go, but this one was different. A major editorial failure, the political potency of Donald Trump being involved and simmering political hostility to the corporation put the BBC at the centre of a perfect media storm.
Tim Davie saw an opportunity to bring his troubled tenure as Director General to an end, warning against the BBC being “weaponised” on his way out, and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness followed swiftly behind.
The corporation’s decision to fight President Trump’s legal action will ensure the fallout lives on for a long time yet. And amid the debate about the BBC’s future, Sky’s possible takeover of ITV, the Netflix play for Warner Bros and The Telegraph joining the Daily Mail stable, may all combine to fundamentally re-shape the UK media landscape in 2026.
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