Kicking off 2025 with a Campaign Lab hack-day

I spent my first Sunday of 2025 at a Campaign Lab hack day. After two weeks with friends and family, avoiding the news and minimising social media, it was great to dive back into politics and technology.

Campaign Lab was set up in May 2018 to focus on data-driven strategies for political campaigning. A key part of Campaign Lab’s mission is to grow and nurture a community of progressive, politically engaged data scientists, researchers and campaigners. They’re also keen to work with digital anthropologists. The community meets regularly to develop innovative election tools and improve understanding and analysis of political campaigning.

Around 50 people attended the hack day at Newspeak House. After coffee and welcome talks, we split into small groups of twos and threes to work on specific tasks and problems. Some projects analysed different political campaigns on social media, or looked at agendas of specific public figures. Others examined traditional communications like manifestos and personal statements. Most projects used some kind of scraping tool (like Apify) to extract and analyse data.

Why now?

Growing up in London in the 1970s and ’80s, my friends and I generally took it for granted that the world was opening up and hard-won freedoms would remain won. Landmark legislation like the Race Relations Act 1965 (1965), Abortion Act (1967) and Sex Discrimination Act (1975) suggested that society was becoming fairer and more equal.

Sure we might have had to support CND, campaign at Greenham Common or go on protest marches, but at least we had the right – and momentum – to do those things. From 1979 we had Margaret Thatcher and neoliberalism. Certain freedoms were curtailed through the Local Government Act 1988 (Section 28), the Criminal Justice Act 1994 and the Poll Tax (which forced Thatcher’s resignation). But the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe fuelled the belief that western liberal values were winning out.

In 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published a book called The End of History and, by the year 2000, the UK chancellor Gordon Brown had announced an end to economic boom and bust. The UK Labour party were back in power and for most of us, things were looking rosy.

But September 11, 2001 marked a turning point. The War on Terror was declared, seen by some (eg Noam Chomsky or George Leaman) to be fighting a legitimate terrorist threat with an American imperialist agenda. The 2003 invasion of Iraq soured the UK public’s relationship with Tony Blair. The Afghanistan War sucked up resources and killed more than 43,000 Afghan civilians over 20 years yet the Taliban still returned to power.

In 2008 the global financial crisis wreaked even more damage. Western liberal democracies were not only under attack, they could no longer promise that hard work and dedication would get you a decent house and nice things (or even enough food) for your family. Meanwhile, climate change became the climate emergency, with extreme weather driving increasing risk of floods and wildfires across the globe.

Uncivil society

Now, with the rise of the Reform party here in the UK, Donald Trump’s re-election in the US and Elon Musk’s apparent commitment to trolling left-wing politicians, it’s clear that progressive values are under attack. As Gabriel Gatehouse suggests in the final episode of series one of his excellent BBC podcast, The Coming Storm, why keep on working hard and playing it by the rules when our supposedly righteous leaders are misbehaving AND using their power, money and networks to cover things up? The liberal establishment’s protection of Bill Clinton despite numerous allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct is one glaring example.

We live in a time when emotions seem to lead much political decision-making. We make choices in an instant – based on fear, disgust, anger or (more rarely) joy. In the social media age, language and the art of communication are more important than ever. But “facts” (increasingly subjective) are often lost in a sea of trolling, outrage, mis and disinformation.

How might we address these very 21st century problems, especially when we ourselves don’t fully understand them? And AI-generated content is adding exponential complexity into the mix.

Let’s get to work

I first heard about Campaign Lab a few weeks ago via Ed Saperia. I met Ed in 2014 when I volunteered at Wikimania. Since then, Ed has set up Newspeak House – a “college for political technologists”. I’ve been to Newspeak House a couple of times in the past (most recently for James Cattell’s How to build a community event). So far, I’m impressed. It’s an open-plan loft-style venue with solid central heating and clean loos: hiding behind an 18th century shop front on Bethnal Green Road.

I had a great time at the hack day because I caught up with some old friends. Everyone was helpful and welcoming and I learnt some new skills. There’s free food and drink and you can stay as long as you want and do whatever you’re able and in the mood to help out with. It’s nice to be back in that environment again. And it feels especially good to be working on something that might actually make a difference.

Campaign Lab will run more hack days in 2025. And they run hack nights every other Monday. You can find out more via their website.

Maybe see you at the next one?

 

Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch (via Unsplash)

Misinformation at the grassroots of UK politics