I’ve been trying not to wade in when housing and homelessness feature in the media. This has taken quite some self-control. First Andy Burnham’s announcement about “ending rough sleeping”, then Kemi Badenoch on banning non-British nationals from social housing. But yesterday, when the number of children homeless in temporary accommodation reached yet another all-time high, at 177,530, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So, here goes.

First, Andy Burnham. It’s great that he wants to help rough sleepers off the streets. It sounds as though he means a further rollout of Housing First, which means giving rough sleepers a social home while simultaneously providing intensive support with complex problems such as addiction and mental illness. In other words, you don’t require people to have straightforward lives before entrusting them with a home. It’s a great idea, and as everyone loves to cite, has been successful in Finland. In Finland, where there are massively more social homes, and a far more generous social security system. In this country, the main obstacle to Housing First has been the lack of properties and the cost. Is the government’s much-vaunted increase in council house building going to absorb rough sleepers before anyone else? That’s a choice one could make, for sure, but politically tough and not one we’ve heard mentioned.

Second, an announcement on preventing homelessness would have been far better. Building homes would be the mainstay of that. But it would also require a completely new approach to delivering support when problems first arise in people’s lives, rather than when they have reached the intolerable level of pain that requires intensive and costly intervention. For some more thoughts on that, check out the recent report of the Social Insights Panel, which I chair: Six ways to move the dial on prevention - Future Governance Forum

Preventing homelessness would also mean reforming the asylum system, which makes me wonder whether the follow up statements from the government focusing on “long-term rough sleepers” is a way of saying “not the asylum seekers who have been kicked out of their accommodation with nowhere to go”.

And third, what has been even more frustrating has been the narrative from several well known and influential commentators, a trope that has been winding me up since the pandemic: “We did it during covid so we can do it again.” Please. By all means cite the “Everyone In” response to Covid, in which rough sleepers were moved off the street and into hotels, as a great example of co-operation between central and local governments, civil society and businesses. But don’t promote it as a solution to homelessness. It was actually a dramatic increase in temporary accommodation and relied on significant (and long-term unaffordable) input from charities. And what happened to all those people after the pandemic? There are reasons we don’t hear so much about that.

Living in one room in a hotel without proper cooking facilities is very hard indeed, as a tragic proportion of those 177,530 children will tell you. Plus, isn’t spending public money on hotels controversial enough already?

Meanwhile, on another political football pitch, we have Kemi leaning hard into the idea that immigrants can turn up and move straight into a social home. This idea is downright dangerous. This week, in the hairdresser, I heard that “they can just turn up here and be given a £250,000 house”. It transpired this factoid was the market value of an HMO – but the right-wing commentator involved had not explained that.

Nor has Kemi gone in for explaining some basic facts.

First, to get a social home, you have to be legally settled in the UK, have recourse to public funds – which rules out, for example, many victims of domestic abuse who are here on spousal visas, pass a local connection test, and reach the top of a waiting list which in England is now well over 1.3 million households.

Second, if this becomes government policy, many individuals – including families and pensioners – who have lived in this country for decades will lose their homes.

Third, a social home is not a hand-out. Tenants pay rent, which goes back into the exchequer. The implication that they are not contributing to the country is entirely wrong. Social housing is the only answer to the unaffordability crisis that leads to homelessness, destitution and ultimately costs the government a fortune in housing benefit, temporary accommodation and public services. Causing more of those problems is not the answer. Quite apart from the fact that it’s immoral.

Rant over, except that, as I said at the start, in the midst of these announcements we have learned that the number of children homeless in temporary accommodation has risen yet again. I joined Shelter as chief executive nine years ago now. Every year since then this grim statistic has risen. Yet solving it is no mystery. Every government I’ve worked with, both Conservative and Labour, knew exactly how to do it. And they knew – from Shelter research ( Our 'Brick by Brick' report in full - Shelter England )  – exactly how to invest in order to achieve a massive payback to the public purse by truly ending homelessness. To be fair, Keir Starmer’s government set the ball rolling by significantly increasing investment in building social homes. He wasn’t great at rhetoric, as I think we have all heard countless times by now. And selling the true answers in a climate of such polarisation and misinformation is going to take a gift of rhetoric that we can only hope the new PM will demonstrate. And a government that joins up policy on homelessness, housing and public services now and for the long term.

I started working as a coach straight after I left my last full-time role as CEO of Shelter in March 2025, and my coaching practice is now probably the centre of my working life - though trying to be worthwhile as a peer is starting to come close. I’ve just hit the grand total of 30 clients since then. It’s made me reflect. I try to go for a walk before every coaching session, and I’ve noticed two themes are coming up more than any others as I walk: confidence and control.  

A bit of context: all my past and present clients are in leadership roles, but by no means all are CEOs. That’s how I like it. I learn just as much from a newly promoted “head of” as I do from a CEO, which makes sense: throughout my career I’ve learned from colleagues at all levels. The need to build confidence, and to understand what you should and shouldn’t, can and can’t control, are fundamentally linked questions that come up at all levels of leadership. I’ve now spent over a year working through these with clients, and this blog is about some of what I’ve learned. 

I love coaching. It’s a privilege to have the space to think with a client about what being a leader means for them. I could have used some of their wisdom when I was doing the role myself, frankly.  

Which brings me to my first theme for this blog: confidence. It’s glib to say that no one is confident all the time, but it’s true. I’m not sure the plethora of leadership “models” is necessarily helping either, because when you’re actually in the role, it’s easy to feel pulled in different directions. People want a leader who can admit to what they don’t know, who can be humble and ask questions, but they also want a leader who’s ready to take the decisions only they can take.  

To complicate things still more, leadership is a contested space. People in governance roles, peers both internal and external and colleagues at all levels will take some of that space, sometimes without asking and even without meaning to, because organisational leadership abhors a vacuum. There’s nothing wrong with sharing space, and there’s everything right with offering it, but it has to be intentional. Whether you see yourself as a “servant leader”, a “transformational leader”, a “situational leader”, or any other, you still have to define, understand and own the space in which you operate. 

I find it useful to picture the leadership space as a circle with four segments (above). The first to populate is the space you have a duty to occupy, then there’s the space you have a right to occupy, the space you can grow into, and the space you can welcome others into. Elements of the role will move between these, depending on your own development, and that of the people you can delegate to. What’s not on that list but super important is to think about where you have the most fun. I’m coming to that later. 

The space you have a duty to occupy isn’t just the job description. We all have a duty to our values, the promises we’ve made, the responsibilities that come from our personal privilege. As leaders we are accountable not only for what we do, but also for what others do. At this level, there’s no point fretting about delegating: whatever you delegate, you are still accountable for its delivery. The first space we feel our way into is our duty, and our personal framework of values, unearned privileges and accountabilities. With experience, we can pretty much populate this space before we even start, but most leaders need to think it through on the job, and coaching can help a lot. 

The space you have a right to occupy is the space you can take because of your unique strengths, talents, skills, knowledge and experience. It’s the space you’ve earned: the contribution that only you can make in your leadership role. It's your personal impact. It’s what means that a leader shapes an organisation – often more than they know, unless they take the time to define what sits in this space. Understanding the space you have a right to occupy is a process of self-knowledge and growing confidence.  

The third segment is the space you can grow into. Everyone has opportunities for growth. It’s nothing to feel self-critical about. Most people also have the ambition to develop and improve.  

Once you understand what is in the first three segments, it becomes much easier to define the fourth: the space you can give to others. As you develop as a leader, and the first three segments of the circle fill up, more opportunities, tasks and responsibilities will inevitably move into this fourth segment of the circle – or they should. As you move opportunities for delegation into this fourth segment, the space they moved from will help inform how you delegate and what checks and balances you will want to use. 

Now let’s think about control. One of the most common questions people bring to coaching is about how much they can and should control in their role. How much should they delegate, and then how do they manage the anxieties that inevitably creates? 

In my experience, it’s very hard to delegate the space you have a duty to occupy. That’s one reason why it’s vitally important to define it tightly.  What you can do, however, is work alongside colleagues to define their own leadership space, starting with their own duty: the space that their own accountability, values and responsibilities create.  

Everything else, in my view, not only can but should be open to delegation. Otherwise how will you ever really create space for your own growth? You can delegate the space you have a right to occupy by coaching and developing others. You can delegate the space you once grew into by openly and honestly showing others how that growth happened. And the space you welcome others into is defined by their space for growth, which as a leader you should have helped them to see.  

Thinking about owning and sharing space in this way has helped me to manage imposter syndrome in my own life. I may not belong in a space yet, but I can grow into it.   

It’s also helped me leave behind the stresses of delegation and start to feel comfortable and even enjoy it.  

Which brings me to the final task in the leadership circle: putting a big red star by all the elements of the role where you have most fun, whichever segment of the circle they’re in. This is the stuff we know we’re good at, perhaps better than all our colleagues. It’s the stuff we get a kick out of. We already know the job will be done well before we start it. People praise us for it. It’s more than just a comfort zone, it’s a luxury zone. It’s important to us because not every aspect of leadership is fun, let’s face it.  

The fun things can be the ones we hang on to that we really should delegate. The problem is part emotional attachment, part a (possibly justified) belief that nobody will do it as well as you. It’s also the space where we never feel like imposters. Giving that up is a tough ask.  

But we have to. Let people try things even if you think you would do it better. You might be right, but you might learn a different way of doing things – and you might learn that good is good enough. 

Our confidence as leaders is built by knowing, owning and then continually and intentionally refining the space we occupy: letting others in, so that they can watch us learn and feel safe that where only we are accountable, we know and accept it.  

Painting this picture really helps with both confidence and control. If you think talking this through would be useful, I have some spaces for new clients coming up in September and October. If you’re interested, please get in contact here or via the contact page on my website

People talk about a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other: the inner battle between insecurity and confidence. Life can feel like that, of course, but I’m not a fan of that metaphor. I picture two metaphorical guardian angels: self-belief and self-knowledge. They talk to each other as well as to me. Self-knowledge keeps self-belief rooted in reality. And self-belief ensures that self-knowledge, fed by weaknesses as well as strengths, doesn’t obsess about perceived failings. And they can both change. 

If we’re not careful, our idea of ourselves gets stuck, sometimes even in childhood. In my coaching practice and in my own life I very often see the risk of this happening. This blog is about one big example of how it nearly happened to me.  

When I look back over the biggest changes in my life, the big leaps forward in my self-belief and self-knowledge, they’re not all from the jobs I’ve done and the professional success I’ve had. The most important way I’ve broken through some big self-belief and self-knowledge blockers is as a climber. 

As a child I loved climbing trees, I loved scrambling around rocks and I was exhilarated by being on clifftops. I even used to envy the men who work at the top of cranes (there was a lot of building going on in 1970s and 80s London). So how was I so stuck that I never even for one second dreamed I could be a climber until I was 50? 

I gave up making any effort at any sport whatsoever at about 14. I decided I didn’t need it, and I just used to bunk off to a café near school and chain smoke. Self-consciousness about my body, not helped by the ridiculous get-up we had to wear for PE. The extremely restricted menu of options: gymnastics, tennis, netball or lacrosse – no good at those, you’re no good at PE. The pigeonholing: sporty girls, brainy girls, cool girls – sporty definitely seemed the least likely in my case. 

There were also personal reasons. I’m such a competitive person that I was middle aged before I acquired the wisdom to make a real effort at something I’ll never be, objectively speaking, “good at”. As a child, my two brothers were standout great at sport, universally acknowledged. My sister was a beautiful ballet dancer. I was destined to succeed at things that required no physical prowess at all.  

And I’m disabled. As a child, the multiple hospital appointments, weekly physiotherapy, inability to run properly, painful joints, all just seemed to confirm that I should focus on piano practice and trying to be clever. Both of which I enjoyed by the way – this isn’t a sob story.  

Inasmuch as I knew myself by the time I was an adult, I knew I loved heights, I loved challenge, I loved mastering fear and taking a risk –  and anyone who’s worked with me can confirm the latter. But I didn’t know how shallow my exploration of any of these was.  

When my youngest daughter got into climbing and persuaded me to give it a try, I only agreed because I didn’t want her or my husband (a serious climber) to think I was scared. It was pretty unheard-of for me to try something, in public, that I thought I had almost no chance of succeeding in. 

Obviously I wasn’t good at it - this isn’t a fairy story. I was just less awful than I expected. And guess what, success isn’t what I always thought it was. Boy did that fact give both my angels something to chew over.  

Put any reasonably fit 25-year-old bloke on an indoor climbing wall, with no special training, and he’ll quickly reach a grade that I will never aspire to. I am not a “good climber”.  I’m a better climber than you might expect a 60-year-old woman with chronic osteoarthritis to be, and that’s good enough for me. But even that’s not the point.  

Climbing for me is about discovering not just some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and the majesty of the rock that our planet is made of, but it’s also recognising the courage, determination, strength, agility, self-control, concentration and spirit of exploration that are absolutely at the heart of who I am. There you go, a direct quote from my self-belief angel.  

I’ve joined a new community of paraclimbers – the most diverse and non-judgemental community I’ve ever been a part of. They’ve influenced me in every area of my life more than they’ll ever know. 

I had a life-changing climbing accident four years ago, which left me hanging on a rope up a cliff for two and a half hours, with an open double fracture to my ankle. The fear I was holding at bay was not that I might fall, but that I might never climb again. The thought of not doing everything possible to get back to climbing never occurred to me. And the accident has indeed left me an even more unlikely climber than before.  

And it interests me that the place where it happened is one of my most special places, because of all the blissful climbing days both before and after the accident, but even more because of a day that changed my life and proved once and for all that my body and mind working together can overcome a lot. It’s the place where I can comfortably sit with my self-belief and self-knowledge.  

The list of things I wish I’d known as a girl and young woman gets longer by the day. There’s no point in regrets. My point is, our perceptions of ourselves can change – radically even. As for me, I’d truly say that to keep getting wiser, I need to keep climbing.  

We’ve just launched the first paper from the Future Governance Forum’s Social Insights Panel and it’s really made me think.

Of course I’ve reflected in depth on all the evidence we heard during the months of work leading up to it, but I don’t mean that. I’ve also thought long and hard about why our “six breakthroughs for public service reform” have resonated so powerfully with me.

The cause that most motivates me isn’t public service reform. That’s essential but it’s a means to an end. That end has to be social justice, fairness, respecting that anyone who needs help has an equal right to get it.

I’ve been thinking back over experiences throughout my career. This isn’t evidence – look in the paper itself for that (link below). This is just stories from someone who has become ever more passionately convinced over decades that a situation where people are actually afraid of the services that should be helping them, and are blamed for the trauma that those very services have often exacerbated, is a situation we should not tolerate. And who, meanwhile, has seen that situation get worse not better, despite the Herculean efforts of many practitioners and leaders.

The panel focused on what has to change in order for public services to become genuinely preventative. For me that means a 180 shift from the situation I just described. It means people voluntarily seeking help when they first realise they need it. And that means they trust that they will be heard, believed, respected and shown where to go next.

I believe in trying to keep blogs short, so I’m focusing on three of the six breakthroughs. But do check out the full report because all six matter.

Create meaningful opportunities for belonging 

During one of our roundtables, we heard that a woman told the fantastic Magpie Project in London “my friend told me to come here and tell you everything”. That is trust: the belief that even when you don’t know exactly what will happen, it will be OK. In a chilling contrast, a young person told us: “How can I feel ‘belonging’ when I’m excluded and seen as a problem?”

People’s sense of belonging is inextricably bound up with identity. I started a chat with a WhatsApp group of fellow paraclimbers (climbers with a wide range of disability and neurodivergence - speaking of a sense of belonging, and how bound up it is with identity…) about where they feel they belong. One friend said: “Feeling important is a big part of belonging.” Where people believe we matter, we open up. Feeling important shouldn’t be a luxury, but I’ve been reflecting on my own experience and realised that privilege brings a sense of belonging. The most entitled people I know just assume they belong everywhere. The least entitled don’t feel important anywhere.

Throughout my career I’ve seen that the more contact with services people have, the less important they feel. I’ve even experienced this myself. I’ve never felt less important in my life than in a hospital bed in the orthopaedic ward, when the consultant breezes up to my bed surrounded by an entourage. A professional who in my work life I would approach as an equal, suddenly makes me feel I’m nothing at all. Ever felt like that? That’s how the people we label as “hard to reach” or “complex needs” feel all the time.

When I was chief executive of Shelter, someone who was recovering from street homelessness once described powerfully to me the experience of being ignored by passer-by after passer-by, day after day. He had systematically lost all sense of belonging: family, workplace, social life. It didn’t have to be that way.

We have to find out where people feel they belong and let the journey to support start there. That means nurturing the diversity of those places. In public services terms, it means investing in small, community-led groups and organisations – and that’s the opposite of current funding practices which are driving them to the brink of extinction. It means resisting the urge to simplify, create “one front door”, funnel everyone through “hubs”. And it means recognising that two of the most talked about ambitions of government, locally and nationally – the journey to preventative public services and the rebuilding of trust and a sense of belonging – are in fact the same thing.

Focus on people’s needs rather than being triggered by risk –  all too often the risk to institutions themselves

When I was signing off the final version of our paper, I thought long and hard about the second part of this. It’s pretty harsh to say that public institutions are often more focused on the risks to themselves than the needs of the people they exist to serve.

It’s what we heard throughout our work, so I left it in. And on a personal level, my long and hard thinking on this went back decades.

As a journalist in the 1990s I wrote a lot about high profile deaths of children, followed by inquiries and reports, and reams of newspaper coverage. The media vilification of children’s social services included front page photographs of individual social workers and senior managers, under headlines directly blaming them for a child’s death at the hands of a parent, step-parent or carer. Local authority children’s services entered a period of almost continuous redesign and restructure, with all the uncertainty and fear that creates for individuals working in the system. Every inquiry brought more blame, and questioned why the lessons of previous inquiries had not been acted upon – as though a defensive and embattled profession and system is one where learning is even possible. A high degree of risk aversion in public services is understandable.

Child protection is all about risk. So is the protection of abused women from murder by the men in their lives. The risks to organisations and the individuals within them of getting it wrong are real and severe. The risks to potential victims are deadly. But the aim has to be to avoid those situations, not just manage them better. When a system doesn’t open up opportunities for early disclosure, completes risk questionnaires rather than seeking to understand needs, enforces thresholds and operates as a gatekeeper, it actually allows risk to escalate – it helps create the situations it should seek to avoid, where lives are destroyed and professional reputations shattered.

Overhaul public and social sector commissioning culture and practice – at a local level to rebuild trust with community organisations and groups

When I became chief executive of Women’s Aid, I was utterly baffled and furiously angry to see the way in which local government commissioning, incentivised by central government, was systematically destroying one of the proudest achievements of feminism in the UK: the network of specialist services to protect women and children from domestic abuse. Decades of learning were at risk from a culture that demanded data on “results” without funding their collection or analysis, failed to value diversity, imposed a risk-led system and devalued – sometimes even openly derided – a feminist approach.

Specialising in women was often seen as unnecessary, never mind specialising in women from specific marginalised communities. Services built on trust and reliant on women’s sense of belonging in order to offer help were forced to compete with each other for funds by adopting standardised tools and focusing on the highest risk cases.

This continues. Just in the last week I was told of one area where “this former trailblazing accessible one-stop shop … now has an appointment-only system, a waiting list, and is swamped with police referrals”.

I can remember when the early practice of giving grants to small community groups was justified on the basis that those groups were more accessible, less stigmatising and more specialist than public sector organisations. This was exactly right. The shift from grant-giving to competitive procurement is now undoing the very reasons why public services were funding local charities in the first place.

What do I conclude from this?

It’s harder than ever to look beyond risk. We are living in a deeply divided country, threatened by war and external economic shocks. We have ministers who know that rebuilding trust and reforming public services are urgent and essential but can’t (or won’t) invest in doing it. We are living with the consequences of decades of reduced investment, and a misguided focus on risk-driven systems that exclude both professional judgement and the voices of the people who need support.

Yet still, from all over the country, the Social Insights Panel heard of communities coming together, civil society organising to overcome marginalisation and exclusion. It’s almost unbelievable that this work has survived, but it has.

Any reform of public services must be driven by the simple fact that without those groups, organisations, communities, it simply cannot succeed. And that’s because public service reform is more than “system change”: it’s fundamental to a fairer society, where people feel they matter.

If all the philanthropists talking about the “impact economy” want an idea, why not try funding one half of what Demos - in an excellent report* published in the same week as ours - call “double running”.

Investing in true prevention will ultimately save millions currently spent on crisis. But you can’t just disinvest from crisis intervention. What’s needed is a long term plan for the transition. If there’s a case for investment, surely this is it. Just do it ASAP - while there’s still true prevention left to invest in.

• The full paper from the Social Insights Panel of the Future Governance Forum, working in partnership with the Henry Smith Foundation and the Better Way network, can be found here:  https://www.futuregovernanceforum.co.uk/resource/six-ways-to-move-the-dial-on-prevention/

• The report from Demos referred to above can be found here: https://demos.co.uk/research/the-respect-story-a-political-narrative-for-public-service-reform/

England and Wales are increasingly isolated in the world as countries where women can still be criminalised for terminating a pregnancy. Even in the USA, including Texas, abortion law does not criminalise women. I was proud to be part of a landmark vote in the House of Lords last week to change this. But since then, every single day has brought a new onslaught of propaganda and disinformation, so that now the pressure to row back on this hard-won change is inexorably building.

It’s a sad fact about campaigning that if you’re at the point of myth-busting, the myths are out of control and the busting simply hardens them in people’s minds. Despite this, I have to state that there has been no change to the 24-week limit on abortion, no change to who can provide an abortion, no change to the grounds for abortion, and no change to the requirement for approval by two doctors.

With the myth-busting out of the way, here’s why I am so passionate about this change. It’s about more than “pro-choice”. It strikes to the core of my feminism.

Criminalisation of women under abortion law is just one way in which our state uses fear to remove women’s choices. And right now, it’s the one way we can do something about.

I’m talking about the way our criminal justice system and the culture surrounding it are hard-wired to impose blame, stigma, public humiliation and punishment on women at the most difficult and traumatic moments in our lives.

Women are terrified to report rape and sexual assault to the police, because they know that a culture of disbelief, blame and minimisation persists. They are even more afraid to go through with a court case, because their behaviour, sexual history, any previous allegations they have made, will all be used against them. If there is any way to blame them for what happened, they fear it will be found. And their fear is well founded.

In domestic abuse cases, ignorance or downright misogyny mean that women’s victimisation by controlling and violent men is all too often viewed and described as “a volatile relationship” or “six of one, half a dozen of the other” by professionals, including police officers, social workers and judges. There are many people with power over women’s lives who can’t or won’t distinguish self-defence from aggression or see the pattern of psychological, coercive or economic abuse that often renders a woman vulnerable and even confused or unwell.

In the family courts, where a majority of cases feature domestic abuse, women find themselves accused of so-called “parental alienation” if they describe their ex-partner’s abusive behaviour. They find themselves held responsible for the impact of abuse on their children, or blamed for the loss of a male “role model”. They end up unable to free themselves from the abuse, despite their best efforts, because of child contact arrangements that they have to allow – and must watch carefully in case the abuser takes the opportunity to cause more harm.

And if you’re thinking this is all out of date, think again. Right now the House of Lords Select Committee on the impact of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is hearing evidence from organisations and survivors that is a stream of examples of all the above.

In this context then, and given what we know about the weaponisation of every aspect of pregnancy and motherhood – from conception to parenting itself – by men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and minds, the criminalisation of women who terminate a pregnancy has to be seen as part of a pattern. It’s a pattern of control through blame and stigma. It’s one more way for the state to make the threats of abusers come true: when you try to claim full autonomy, you enter risky territory.

Decriminalising women leaves abortion law intact, while taking a step towards compassion and understanding – qualities in short supply for women in crisis.

I spent nearly five years as Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, fighting for compassion and understanding in the criminal and family courts. I see this as part of that fight. The wave of disinformation that has followed the vote in the Lords comes from people who don’t believe in abortion full stop. They’re entitled to their opinion, but that’s not the debate we’re having here.

This is about a small step towards a criminal justice system that no longer finds ways of blaming and punishing women when what they need is compassion, dignity and privacy.

One of many birthday party selfies

I turned 60 last month, which feels surreal until I look in the mirror. Someone I know who’s roughly my age calls this time “Wiser Life”. I don’t feel wiser than many people, especially now I don’t use Twitter, but I certainly feel wiser than my younger self.

What I do feel is happy, and proud of what I’ve learned about how to get there. I’m still learning of course, and I could get happier (you never know), but my goal is to feel just as happy as I am now, for as long as I can. I don’t mean jumping for joy, I mean very glad indeed to be alive.

I think my happiness comes from the balance I’ve found between acceptance, hope and resistance. So here are some of the big lessons I’ve learned from creating and nurturing that triangle of power.

Acceptance

1. Don’t underestimate the role of luck. You can’t “manifest” good things happening, and neither are bad things a result of your inability to do so. I’ve had unearned privilege in spades in my life, as well as some lucky timing. I’ve worked really hard as well. I’ve also had some bad luck, like everyone, which I deal with as well as I can. I accept my privileges and the responsibility they bring, and I accept that bad things happen and they’re not my fault.

2. As a woman, I will never be at peace with my appearance. I don’t believe women – in any culture I’ve ever seen – can even tell where self-expression ends and patriarchal expectation begins. Do what you like with how you look, but it’s an illusion that liberation lies down that road, and peace definitely does not. (More on patriarchy below – of course!)

3. Lots of people don’t like me. I have to be kind – or at least reasonable – to them anyway. They can’t make me unhappy. Also, however, no one can make you happy either, except yourself. For certain, expecting a partner to make you happy is like asking them to nail jelly to a wall. They can understand you, care desperately about your happiness, put you first when it really matters. That’s all fantastic but it won’t make you happy if you’re not. You can’t make your children happy either, by the way. You can teach them some skills, and if they’re lucky as well, and understand that only they can create their happiness, they might get there.

Hope

1. It is in fact possible to make the world a better place, and we all have different talents, space for action and levels of responsibility for doing that. Yes the world is frightening, but within the boundaries of my own capability and capacity, I can do something about that – for the people I care about, the causes I care about, or both.

2. I know I can learn new things, embrace change, and challenge myself. Finding ways of doing this physically has been one of the best discoveries of my life. I could have done it earlier (cycling from age 40, rock climbing from 50, but before that decades of nothing except a fairly brief but fun period of dancing in clubs – and let’s face it, that phase was swings and roundabouts for the body). Physical challenges train your mind for the much harder challenges and changes life brings. I know I’m in good shape for it.

3. Beauty, whether in art or in nature, doesn’t need a meaning or a purpose or even hopeful subject matter to be a source of hope. I once hung off a cliff, severely injured, for two and a half hours. What kept me serene was the beauty of the sea, sky, birds and cliffs; and the knowledge that people who know they can make the world a better place (see number 1) would be brave enough to rescue me.

Resistance

1. Example of small-level resistance: I do not have to tell you why I use a walking stick, or justify that I’m not some kind of fake disabled person if sometimes I don’t use it, or if I’m good at climbing, you absolute prat.

2. Example of big-level resistance: my eyes are open to the destructive power of the patriarchy. You can roll your eyes all you like, but I know what I know.

3. My mother, who is 86, said to me: “Growing old is not for the faint-hearted.” I’ll let you know in 20 years’ time (yes I have enough self-knowledge to know I’ll still be chucking my opinions out there), but I’m sure she’s right.

If that picture drew you in, tough luck.

The other day I bumped into a friend of a friend on one of my solo think-walks between coaching clients. “Ah you’re Polly, who doesn’t have a dog.” Not how I identify but actually “dog-free” is neat. Since we moved to the country, friends keep asking when we’re getting one. Not on your life. To misquote Lola*, “I will not ever NEVER live with a dog.”

If you’re reading this and you’re one of my many friends who has a dog, yes I do love you but I’ve been pretending. The most I can say about your dog is it’s likeable enough that I can manage my phobia around it. Leave me alone in a room with it and - well actually you may have noticed you can’t do that, because I’ll follow you out of the room like a, well like a dog actually. Unless it reads my mind and beats me to it. If you think about it, this all means I love you more.

As a child I was terrified to enter a dog’s house, which was how I defined any house with a dog. That barking at the door made my panic agonising. My parents were super embarrassed - which you’ll be amazed to hear didn’t cure the phobia. Yes there’s a story behind the phobia but do I have to explain, every single time? I respect that you love your pet. But some people do not like dogs, get over it.

I’m a strong-minded individual so I’ve learned to control the phobia pretty well. But if I’m alone and a dog runs towards me off the lead, it makes my walk a lot less enjoyable to say the least. Actually I often change my route if I see one, and if no one can see that I’m using extreme dog-avoidance tactics and am therefore a weirdo.

What gets me is the actual scorn of many dog owners when they see I’m not up for fondling their pet who’s in my personal space. “He’s not going to eat you love.” “He’s just being friendly - more friendly than you.” “What are you scared of?” I think that’s obvious: I’m scared of your dog.

Not liking dogs is not ok in Britain today. My dislike is not rational, I’ve admitted that. But I’m nice about other people’s phobias. I pick up spiders and take them outside. I don’t offer snake-phobics a cuddle with my snake (ok I don’t have a snake, but I wouldn’t if I did). If someone recounts their terror at seeing a mouse, I don’t go “but it’s absolutely tiny and won’t bite you”. I’m a passionate rock climber but I don’t think people are silly for being afraid of heights.

There’s actually a secret vibe that fellow non-dog-lovers give off. Like how my Grandy could spot another Catholic at 100 paces. It’s a smile that actually says “you are not adorable you deluded creature”. It’s the reaction to the things that set off the jitters (or worse).

These are the big triggers…

Dog poo. It’s disgusting and little bags full of poo are no better thanks.

They get muddy paws on you in winter, spray you with water in summer, and get hair on you all year round. And they lick you. How is that anything but gross?

They beg for your food in the pub. I mean I am notorious for not even sharing my food with fellow humans. I’m definitely not feeding an animal that is actually making me want to get up and leave - except that I’m trapped by picturing some unspecified but terrifying reaction to any sudden movement.

They chase cyclists. Worse, they often bark at and chase people using crutches or walking sticks (of which I am one). “Oh sorry, it’s the stick, he’s nervous of it.” Oh silly me, sorry mate. Not.

Even if you’re not phobic though, dogs are not necessarily of benefit to anyone except their owner - though even I can see that the benefits to the owner can be life-changing in some cases.

I’ve put the top 6 rational reasons why loving dogs shouldn’t be a socially enforced barometer of normality in an appendix below. So if you’re already suffering from a painful attack of righteous anger, you can ignore them.

That’s enough controversy for someone who literally just blogged about rational debate. And yes I know the problem is often the owner not the dog. My point is, how did dog-love become a shorthand for conformity? And if you’re leaving poo around, stop acting entitled.

Some of my best friends and nearest and dearest are dog lovers. One of my favourite people refers to their dogs as their children. As far as I can tell that’s not literally true. But it expresses big love, I get it. Each to their own - but can that include us weirdos please?

*Lauren Child, I will not ever NEVER eat a tomato

Appendix

1. A dog’s carbon footprint is comparable to that of a large car.

2. They harm the countryside by trampling nests and worry or even kill wildlife and farm animals.

3. Dog poo isn’t only disgusting. It also damages plants and wild animals.

4. They attack people. There were over 32,000 dog attack offences in England and Wales in 2024, and hospital admissions after attacks (frequently unreported) rose 47% between 2012-13 and 2022-23.

5. They are often a status symbol in a way that is cruel to the dog itself, with many breeds creating severe disabilities that their breeders and owners certainly wouldn’t want to live with.

6. Chemicals in flea and tick medication pollute waterways and kill aquatic life.

Right after my introduction to the House of Lords, I told The Week in Westminster* I wanted to be part of more reasoned debate than we hear around us, in the public sphere both virtual and IRL, and in the House of Commons. I said I was looking for that among my fellow peers, and believed I would find it. So what am I looking for, exactly? 

As well as active discussion on the issues I care about, I’m looking for less shouting and more engagement with the lines that need to be drawn in our public discourse.There is such a thing as hate speech, and it’s deadly. There’s such a thing as free speech, and it’s precious. Yes, those lines need to be policed when appropriate, but more often these days they must be actively scrutinised and negotiated, and we all individually have a responsibility to engage in that scrutiny and negotiation. I mean lines between free speech and hate speech, between when to engage and when to fight back.

First let’s think about the fight against hate speech. Thanks to the sacrifice of the people most harmed by it, many of us are growing to understand it better. Expressions and words that were once in common use are now rightly understood as offensive. We do not tolerate prejudice and discrimination that we once heard without comment, or were even part of, before we had thought about it in an informed way. Yes hate speech is everywhere and growing, but nevertheless the change over my lifetime has been huge.

There are some cases where ignorance, disagreement and even best intentions are absolutely no excuse. There are ways in which we just should not behave, and if we do, we must apologise, learn and choose a new path as a result. In some cases we should feel the force of the law.

This process has been happening for decades - even centuries. The key argument for policing what we can and can’t say is right: language follows thought but also influences it. You may not like someone but at some point you might no longer be permitted (whether by law or culture) to openly or publicly deride, humiliate or insult them. Then, as the overt hatred is muted, so the cultural context shifts, and maybe your children will grow up not hating them in the first place. Words becoming unacceptable, by majority consent, starts to make prejudices unacceptable. 

I’ve seen many examples of this. As a young journalist I contributed to a book about what was then called political correctness, arguing that the fight to be allowed to discriminate in language is not a fight anyone should be picking. To be clear, I still think that.

But prejudices live on in people’s hearts, as we see from continued discrimination, even if not in overt hate. It can be invisible to those who were never on the receiving end of it. To take an obvious example from my personal and privileged life, three women in the same office would never now be described to a senior manager as “we’ve got a blonde, a brunette and a redhead, take your pick”, as I once was in my 20s (and like all women I have worse examples). That comment being almost unimaginable now, at least in an open office, doesn’t mean women are safe from men’s hatred and violence. It’s a good thing some overt misogyny is better policed now. But it also means some people (men and relatively privileged women) can think misogyny no longer exists. 

But if what you’re after is genuine social change, policing language is only the tip of the iceberg. And it might be the ocean that hides the iceberg from view.

What also matters is how we understand our responsibilities to each other beyond the basics of human decency, and more fully promote greater equity and social justice. If you want to change what people say, it is surely because you want to change their minds. And if you want to change their minds it’s surely because you want to truly change the world for the better.

Changing people’s minds in order to change the world is phenomenally hard. And here lies another major risk when we focus too much on the “free speech vs hate speech” dynamic. A much quicker way to change the course of events is to play the backlash game: to mobilise the people whose minds were never truly changed when the public discourse shifted. You can mobilise them by creating enough of a language backlash to embolden them to reassert their prejudices. That’s why “woke vs anti-woke” is such a battleground in politics. It matters to politicians because shifting the language even wins elections.

That’s also why the far right are not engaged in the search for real answers to exclusion, unfairness, injustice. Far better for them to add fuel to the “free speech vs hate speech” fire. By doing so they may even dismantle that search for real answers: a search that requires research, analysis, genuine public policy innovation – and takes time. They are dismantling it by pretending that by winning the anti-woke battle, people’s lives will genuinely be better. Of course they won’t. But they won’t be better by the other side winning the battle either.

The search for real answers has to involve people you disagree with. It has to be a long game. It has to mean understanding the experiences of everyone who is affected by economic and social disadvantage. Does this mean you have to listen to hate and prejudice? I want to say, of course not. And of course hate speech must be defined and policed. I want to say, we have laws that exclude dangerous ideas, let’s rely on those. But I know they are not working. Often, to be honest, I want to say, just shut up because you’re wrong. 

My point is, we each need to consider deeply how to draw the line: a line between the cod-heroic “I disagree with what you say but I’ll defend your right to say it” trope trotted out by the “free speech” merchants on the far right, and “just shut up because you’re wrong”. Sometimes, yes, it’s about plain old free speech or plain old hate speech. But if you’re about actually changing people’s minds, furthering social justice, making a better world, you have to use your brain. Now, perhaps more than ever in my lifetime, you have to engage in where that line should be drawn, every single day. 

And do I think I’ll find people in the Lords who are doing that? I’ve only been a peer for a matter of days and they’re already reaching out.

• BBC Radio 4 - The Week in Westminster, 13/12/2025

Some changes happen to you, some you choose. The fear that big changes bring is human nature, and worth embracing as such.

The ability to push through uncertainty is an incredible skill that means you can not just endure, but actually walk towards situations that put you through risk, stress, uncertainty and change.

I think it’s a skill you can learn. I’m going to be 60 in 2026 (I know! What on earth?) and I’ve been working those change muscles hard.

I started this year with three months to go of my year-long notice period as CEO of Shelter. Truly, I was profoundly scared of leaving. Yes, I wanted to push myself forward again, to leave organisational leadership behind, find my own path, embrace a new life stage. Yes, there were day-to-day pressures of leadership I was done with, a lack of breathing space that I wanted to leave behind. But I also wanted to test my ability to make a difference in the world in different ways, using what I’ve learned to reflect, to support others, and to find my singular voice.

However tough things got in my leadership roles, and they really did, nothing kept me awake at night. But I woke in the small hours of the Spring of 2025 detailing every way in which I could fail in my new life, with visions of earning nothing, helping no one, losing purpose.

So my advice to anyone contemplating a big change is, nurture your capacity for uncertainty beforehand. For me personally, I think my life-changing climbing accident, four years ago now, was a training ground. So were elements of organisational leadership, where I’ve strived (not always successfully) to help others face uncertainty and change, and come to understand my own abilities along the way.

Through 2025 I’ve been building my coaching business, and finding I love being a thinking partner for leaders more than I ever dared to hope I would. What a fascinating experience.

I’ve been working with organisations and individual leaders at strategic crossroads and it’s utterly absorbing to examine their choices with them.

I’ve joined the House of Lords and I can’t wait to find my voice there.

All this means that the stark fear I felt at the start of 2025 has gone. And it means that, even more than I did then, I truly believe that without fear we are missing our full potential.

It’s why I love to climb. It’s not that I don’t feel scared, it’s that I want to.

For anyone resolving to make big changes in 2026, good luck with the fear. It’s not the enemy, it’s part of you: a natural reaction to situations that are genuinely risky. It’s a privilege to have a life where you can take risks. If you’re lucky enough to have that privilege, don’t waste it.

My website

L-R: Jess Phillips MP, Natalie, Teresa Parker (former Women’s Aid Head of Communications), Nicola Sharp-Jeffs (Surviving Economic Abuse), Clare Laxton (former Women’s Aid Head of Policy), me, Jess Asato MP, David Challen, Sian Hawkins (former Women’s Aid Head of Policy), Laura Richards (crime expert and founder of Paladin stalking advice and support).

Thoughts and memories for 16 Days of Activism

I remember when I first understood what coercive control is. It was one of those moments when your world tilts and never looks the same again. I’d just started as CEO of Women’s Aid in 2013, and a colleague said: “Polly, you need to see, it’s all about entitlement, power and control.” I did see. And ever since, I can’t unsee it.

Coercive control isn’t merely a category  of domestic abuse. It’s the dark heart of all domestic abuse. It’s the right conferred upon men by patriarchy.

That’s why, more than ten years ago, when we at Women’s Aid saw an opportunity to put pressure on the government to make coercive control a crime, joining other incredible campaigners, we gave it our all. And we won.

This week I was overjoyed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the criminalisation of coercive control with people whose stories are part of a country’s awakening to a truth that’s had us all sleepwalking for centuries (pic above). As well as our fellow campaigners, we were joined by David Challen: the release from prison of David’s mother, Sally Challen, after her conviction for killing her husband was reduced from murder to manslaughter, was an event I will never forget. It was a milestone in the recognition and understanding of coercive control that the new offence created. Indeed, only last week I met a woman who told me that the criminalisation of coercive control, and even more the awareness-raising that accompanied it, gave her and her mother a language and framing for what they’d been through for years.

Further campaign wins followed, which were only possible because that change came first, from the incredible work of Nicola Sharp-Jeffs, founder of Surviving Economic Abuse, to the recent scrapping of the presumption of child contact for domestic abuse perpetrators, a huge step towards justice in the family courts made possible by the incredible courage of Claire Throssell and years of campaigning by Women’s Aid.

Make no mistake, what ultimately tips the balance towards change is the survivors whose stories open people’s eyes to the truth that is everywhere but that nearly every cultural and institutional influence denies. Their determination to do whatever it takes to protect other women from what they’ve been through shows the truth to enough people in the right places to tip the balance, for a critical moment. Then it’s up to feminist organisations and campaigners to drive that wedge in. And that takes unity. Our celebration this week was about that unity. Did we agree on everything? No. Did we let our disagreements hold us back? Absolutely not.

Fighting an enemy that is literally how the world works is hard, so it’s no surprise there’s a very long way to go. Domestic abuse is the easiest form of terrorism to get away with. It has millions more victims than the other kind, and the fight against it has a laughably tiny fraction of the resource. Yet as a society we should be far more scared of home-grown perpetrators of domestic terrorism than we are of any threat crossing our borders. We’re far more likely to be held hostage, psychologically and physically harmed, or killed by entitlement, power and control from those closest to us.

When I say “we”, of course, I mean women. And that’s why, if you compare intimate partner coercion and violence with any other serious crime you care to choose, your chances of getting caught and punished are absolutely no deterrent whatsoever.

Still, during the 16 Days of Activism in Violence Against Women, which started on 25 November, we renew our solidarity by celebrating how far we’ve come. Let’s not be despondent about how far we have to go. Let’s remember it’s only in my lifetime that, in the UK, women could get a mortgage without a man’s say-so, or that rape in marriage became a crime.

We know it takes many incremental victories over years to make change. Feminism has survived backlash many times, and will survive again, even though boys and men are once again being persuaded that they’re the victims, that it’s men that are losing rights, that they must reclaim their birthright to control us - by force if necessary. Feminism will overcome, even though the world’s most powerful men have deliberately opened up the online space for women to be abused with impunity. The backlash is strong this time because we were getting stronger. “Me too”, and the wave of online feminist activism that preceded it, had huge force, united women and mobilised male allies.

My first wish for this year’s 16 Days of Activism is that we show each other that feminism is still here and still united, and keep on trying to get more people seeing the truth, the reality of the danger women and girls are in, and the entitlement, power and control at its heart. One person at a time if necessary, though if they’re a judge, a police officer, a social worker, a teacher, a midwife, all the better.

My second is that we remember that we can live with our disagreements and keep in mind that we’re part of something bigger.

Change is slow, laborious work and big campaign wins - like the coercive control offence a decade ago - are few and far between. But they happen.

The most important thing is for feminists to be proud of their truth: men’s centuries old rights over us must be dismantled, however long it takes. We can resist the need for “not all men” narratives, and the even more insidious “poor men too” ones, by constantly remembering what our fight is. OK, patriarchy hurts men too. I get it, as far as it goes - but that’s not very far. If the pros didn’t far outweigh the cons, they would have let go of it by now. And let go they have not.

I was blown away by a speaker in the last week, and if I’m honest that hardly ever happens to me.

The words “Inspirational Speaker” fill me with dread (not that this was billed that way). Maybe it’s because I’ve been inspired by many, many people who have told stories of surviving seemingly impossible adversity and danger, usually exacerbated if not caused by structural and systemic failures and discrimination, so I certainly don’t need Tales of Courage that ignore those things. Unless they’re about climbing obviously. When it’s all about lifting oneself or others up as if by magic, it winds me up.

Anyway, this was Andy Roe - if you don’t know him look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Roe?wprov=sfti1 .

There’s a lot to say about what he talked about but my takeaway was this: the narrative about everything being broken and we don’t know how to fix it is not helping.

I realise it’s easier for two white people to say that. But it’s also not helping if all the people with privilege and power keep saying the country is going to shit and they don’t know what to do about it. Things really are appalling and getting worse for a lot of people. But it’s not demonstrating any understanding or solidarity just to keep pointing that out. Especially for political reasons.

First of all, move aside then and let other people have a go. But secondly and more importantly, tell the stories of people who - all over the country - are doing fantastic things that are helping. New answers are needed for sure, and maybe the government (and I mean civil servants as well as politicians), organisational leaders, journalists don’t know what they are yet. But there are people working in practical and new ways to work them out.

While I was at the event where I heard Andy (run by Windsor Leadership) - a free opportunity I just couldn’t turn down, especially now I have no training budget - I was very sad to miss the Better Way Network national gathering. Because that’s an example of exactly what I mean. People working in their own ways but to shared principles and behaviours. Not accredited or KPI’d but trusted and heard. https://www.betterway.network/

Actually, attending that instead would probably have taught me the same thing.

I am stopping saying things feel unfixable and saying that we need to lean into the new ideas that are being tried. Not only in practice but also some of the fascinating and important thinking that’s going on in thank tanks and civil society that can help the sea change that’s needed.

So I’m not denying a big change is needed. Neither was Andy. But I am saying change is building so lean in, stop looking for people to blame, stop agonising “oh if only all these great people were working together”, stop waiting for old-style evidence and look for new ways of learning what works, stop making it all about you and your fear, if your privilege means your fear is not literally for your life.

Thanks Andy.

If a law, a rule, or even a custom shores up power, look at it with suspicion.

If it reinforces a deceitful narrative about power, that’s even more dangerous.

The presumption in favour of contact with both parents, when applied to fathers who have abused their children - ended by the government last week - was an example of this.

The campaign that led to this change was launched almost a decade ago. I was CEO of Women’s Aid then, and one of the biggest risks that colleagues around the country were flagging was the appalling injustices meted out routinely to survivors of domestic abuse and their children in the family courts. One of the most terrifying cases was that of Claire Throssell, whose two sons Jack and Paul were killed by their father during court-ordered contact, despite both Claire and the boys themselves having urged the court in desperation not to make the order.

We also found convicted abusers being driven from prison to have their day in court, directly questioning their victim (an earlier campaign victory did away with this). We found women’s claims of abuse being routinely dismissed and minimised, even when court orders were in place and police had been called many times. We found a hugely powerful myth known as parental alienation, still widespread, which created a confidence among many professionals who should have known better - particularly judges - that women were well known to coach their children in false allegations in order to heap misery on their ex-partner. We found women being ordered to supervise contact with their abusive ex, despite the obvious danger to themselves and their children.

It all flew in the face of the core principle of the Children Act 1989 - that the child’s best interests are paramount. Mind you, smacking is still legal in 2025 so there you go.

This was the era of Fathers for Justice, leaping around dressed as Batman, camping out on the roof of women they deemed hostile to their cause, convincing the public and professionals that women held all the power in the family courts. Selling a victim narrative that can only gain credibility when the world is blind to the reality of where power truly lies.

All of us in the campaign - colleagues, MPs, academics - knew we ran personal risks both online and offline by launching the campaign. Many potential allies were afraid to join. The extraordinary courage and perseverance of Claire Throssell, and her determination that her boys’ story should be heard and make a difference, meant she was truly the leader. Her example certainly got me through the trolling, lies, house-egging, tyre-slashing and vexatious complaints to the Charity Commission that followed.

I am still in awe of Claire and what she’s achieved.

It’s a story for our times. Men will fight dirty to hold on to power. They are very rarely, as a sex rather than as individuals, disadvantaged by our laws, systems and culture. I’m suspicious of the “patriarchy hurts men too” truism that I keep hearing. Yes of course, living up to “masculinity” is demanding and on an individual level, seen through the prism of identity, can be damaging. I would love that not to be the case for any boy or man. But I worry we’re being sucked into another dangerous false-victim narrative.

We still have an entire criminal justice system in which women’s rights to safety drown in a poisonous soup of misogyny, sexism and disbelief, meaning that men effectively rape and abuse women with impunity. We still have a rape in a school for every week of the school year. Older women still have far fewer years of healthy old age than men. Women still provide vastly more unpaid domestic labour than men.

Yet the narrative of the mad manosphere, that feminism has gone too far and men are its victims, is taking hold in the mainstream, weaponised by politicians who profit from men’s fear.

We are worried about boys and men, and we should be. But to lose sight of where power really lies, and who its victims are, risks lives and can take many years to challenge. Last week was a victory. And also, as Claire Throssell herself said, only a step.

I posted the above pic on insta and described Brian Moore - as of this week, co-vice chair of Women In Sport with me (which of course is his main claim to fame - not! - though it may be mine nowadays) as “a serious ally to women”. He really is, by the way.

Then I was on a long car journey catching up on my regular podcast faves and man did it get me thinking about men.

There’s a couple of pods I listen to that have men and women presenting together. You may guess them from what follows but I’m not a caller-outer in general so if you do, please leave it out of the comments. In each case, the man in question is someone I’ve actually met (highly doubt they’d remember though), and seen a lot in various media, and always thought of as a probable ally. Polite, welcoming, respectful, not a misogynist or other offensive comment in sight, not obviously more egotistical than the next famous person, not throwing their weight around.

But there’s something about the podcast format that reveals true colours. So disappointing! And these two are definitely not allies, though they would freak out to know this was about them. Interrupting, patronising, mansplaining, having the last word in every argument - even every discussion, even every conversation in fact. Reducing the woman’s area of expertise to a level that’s less relevant, more whimsical, less credible than their own (and in both cases, let me tell you, it’s not).

It’s like men in meetings who talk about football animatedly till you walk in and then stop awkwardly, because you couldn’t possibly know about football (I mean, true in my case but you get the point) but they’re not going to make entering a room full of men easy for you.

It’s like the first housing sector meeting I ever went to after joining Shelter, where the only other woman was the facilitator. Three times before lunch some worthy bloke repeated my previously ignored point of view, to murmurs of agreement from the whole room. At lunch the facilitator apologised for not calling it out but “you can see what they’re like”. Indeed I can. Housing (and many other sectors) has improved since then. When we’re in the room at least.

My question is, does the podcast pratness of the Good Blokes signal that in unguarded settings, like the bantzy vibe of pods, the allyship melts away?

In many cases (not Brian’s - check out the ace Women In Sport podcast if you want proof), I just know it does.

Men you are so disappointing. Do not let your guard down, ever. You don’t get a free pass especially when you know no one is going to pull you up. More than that, amplify women (and that doesn’t mean introducing them to talk about something less important or meaningful), let them have the last word (without kindly rephrasing it to show you agree - yes I see you).

Next lesson: don’t let other men get away with it either. I’m not holding my breath.

Not all men? Bloody nearly.

Pic: Me, not on my way to Labour Party Conference

I am not a politico. I’ve spent decades building trust with leaders in very different governments in order to get things done. I am no one’s party insider. As the political chaos mounts I keep thinking “just do something” (see my previous post!). To me, it’s all just a means to an end. Evidence that my heart just isn’t in the politics is that although in three decades I’ve barely passed a year without visiting at least one party conference, I haven’t enjoyed any of them much.

Actually the only actual fun I’ve ever had was at The Sun’s reception at Conservative Party Conference one year. And the fun wasn’t the politics or the in-depth policy chat, let’s leave it there.

My worst ever moment was entering my first security queue as Shelter CEO with a colleague and men’s rights activists spotting me and starting to shout “Polly Neate is a man-hating monster” and other shite and my poor colleague looking somewhat perturbed.

All the conference beauty pageantry makes me angry. And the policy detail that you remember then no one actually asks you about makes my head ache. Meanwhile all the pavement-pounding is not the best for someone with severe osteoarthritis.

Anyway, this year I’m not going. I’ve had three invitations to speak but not one of them was willing to pay my travel or accommodation (speaking fee? don’t make me laugh). So I sulkily held to the rules I set when I became self employed and said no. Then the FOMO set in.

I keep getting fringe and reception invites and seeing the speakers and thinking “yikes, they’re somebody and I’m nobody”. If it’s a fellow freelancer I keep thinking “grrr, bet they got their travel paid”. Reader, it’s a downward spiral.

People keep going “haven’t seen you for ages, let’s catch up at the conferences”. Including a few I would actually love to chew the fat with (though ideally not in a very loud hotel bar surrounded by bright young things if I’m totally honest).

Ah, see. So do I actually want to go? No. Have I ever wanted to go? Not for years. Which would I choose on a Sunday: out on a cliff somewhere absorbed in climbing or trolling around in Liverpool looking for the toilet/meeting room/face in a sea of faces? Obvious.

I’m telling everyone I’ve got the Joy Of Missing Out. I can talk the JOMO into being (I’m a great communicator, that’s why people invite me to speak, but no ladies and gentlemen I am not for free. Nor am I bitter about the whole expenses thing - much). I’ve talked the JOMO into being again by writing this.

It fades into FOMO though. Does that mean it’s not real? Self-employed life is not all a bed of roses, I can tell you. First world problems, I’ve got them. What it tells me though is that FOMO doesn’t have the power over me that it once did. Comparisons and competitiveness are fleeting now. If you’re thinking of leaving a high-status role to do your own thing, as I have, one of my top tips would be, make sure that’s the case for you too!

Words matter in dark times. Civil society is stepping up to this challenge and being punished for it. And because I know the following is true, from my professional expertise, and in solidarity, I’m here to tell you that immigration is not the cause of violence against women and girls, nor is it the cause of the desperate shortage of decent homes. Immigrants are not privileged in this country.

The momentum generated by the spurious link between immigration and people’s personal sense of financial and social security and safety is building. The trouble is, the link is spurious, but the fear it plays on is not.

It’s vital to lean into the truth. The way women’s organisations are joining together to proclaim the truth that the dangers women face are absolutely not the result of immigration is inspiring and brave. Civil society and its leaders are stating and restating the rational arguments, often at great organisational and personal cost. These rallying cries really matter, not because they’ll convince the people who rally to the racist dog-whistle, but because they reach out to those who don’t. I believe there should be specific funding streams to support this work, especially at local level (but that’s another blog).

There’s a big “but” though. It still remains the case that there is probably only one way to deal with a level of fear that has turned toxic: the fear that life could get even worse. That is to stop people’s lives getting worse.

Since leaving London a year ago, I live in a very white place. Most people I meet in passing I’d describe as small-c conservative in outlook. But are there George Crosses everywhere? No, and I believe it’s because a big majority of people round here are comfortable enough that the sense of a community with a grievance can’t build. Tell you what though, if these people catch the fear, the fear has won.

The link between immigration and the personal security of white British people relies on bogus arguments in two of the areas I’ve spent years working in, know about and feel passionate about: housing, and violence against women and girls.

It is categorically the case that everyone in Britain is living through both a housing emergency and an epidemic of misogynist violence, with millions directly affected by both. The government has rightly identified both as priorities since before the general election.

Yet the level of investment needed in both is not yet anywhere near being in place. It remains the case that people on low incomes simply cannot afford a decent home. Absolutely no excuse for racism of course. But a real injustice nonetheless, and with injustice comes grievance, and with grievance comes blame. And with the departure of Angela Rayner we have lost a leader with the power and passion to fight for social housing. The long wait continues.

I have no doubt in Jess Phillips as an utterly committed champion of the ambition to halve violence against women and girls. But again, and not her fault, the level of targeted investment needed is miles away. Support for women and girls surviving sexual assault and domestic abuse is falling apart. Prevention is just a fine word right now because it’s impossible when a crisis has become overwhelming.

For those of us who feel passionate about social justice, truth and what remains of the national commitment to fairness and opportunity, I would say that breaking the fantasy causal link between immigration and the housing emergency, and between immigration and women’s safety, has to be priority. Not with words but with real change, jump-started in the Budget. I am not saying pander to racists, invest in white communities. I’m saying invest in safety and security for us all. The rules of the game have changed and the government is not winning. Neither are the values many right across mainstream politics cling to. It’s time the centre of our politics, including the government, played by different rules too.

Pic: Me keeping my head above water

I’ve just read a wonderful blog on here by Dr Sarah Hughes. Sarah is Chief Executive of Mind, but she’s far more than that. She’s a beacon of being oneself. She’s a leader in the true sense that if she turns around she’ll see her followers behind her, and her sisters walking alongside.

I’ve linked to her piece below. It inspired me to write my own thoughts on “beauty” standards and ageing. I put “beauty” in inverted commas because I would never, ever dare use that word in relation to myself. An inner voice goes: “Beauty?! Don’t get above yourself.”

I don’t aspire to beauty (don’t make me laugh) but I do aspire to minimise the little disappointments that chip away at me every time I catch my reflection. Yes, every single time. And I absolutely know I’m not alone in that. Far, far from it. And even the most obviously beautiful women I know feel the same.

So I never leave the house without make-up (even to go climbing or kayaking which is laughable but there you go). I dye my naturally very dark but greying hair blonde in order to make the greys a tad less obvious. I count every calorie because I’m properly terrified of being overweight.

I know feminists who don’t make any of these compromises and I genuinely believe their truth is where we all should be. They’re my sheroes because I also know that how we look truly does change how we’re seen, not aesthetically but as people. I am just not that brave. Like Sarah (and please do read her post), I’m wasting mental and emotional energy on small compromises that feel necessary even though they also feel like defeat.

I also know feminists who make choices that I wouldn’t: cosmetic surgery, Botox, the whole “tweakments” shebang.

I guess my red line is, never ever criticise another woman for what she feels will keep her head above water in the hostile ocean of patriarchy we’re all swimming in. If you can get through the multiple times a day when every woman feels the pull of the undertow - self-hatred, self-judgement and, worse, the temptation to judge other women - and still flourish in the world, do it all as far as I’m concerned.

But for God’s sake let’s not define it as liberation. It’s nothing more than survival.

And with that, Sarah ⬇️

Love you Sister.

https://open.substack.com/pub/drsarahhughes/p/confessions-of-a-feminist-with-fillers?r=4n8kld&utm_medium=ios

No wonder young people love smartphones. I really really hate to be without mine. A few months ago, while rock climbing, I dropped my phone into the sea off a cliff I was half way up and as I saw it bounce off a ledge and disappear into Davy Jones’s Locker, I actually had to stop myself trying to grab it.

Sometimes I see things on my phone that I don’t want to see, but mostly it’s how I keep in touch, shop, amuse myself. I love the togetherness of my husband and I both scrolling in the mornings, sharing news stories and funny goings on from group chats, then starting our puzzles ritual once our brains have woken up.

I love social media. It’s made its place in my life and that’s often a fun place.

I took a permissive approach to phones as a parent. Yes it was easier then (my daughters are in their 20s now - though one only just), but as with everything else that’s both fun and potentially dangerous (going out at night, dating and sex, alcohol, drugs, the Populars in year 9), the answer is personal boundaries, values, knowledge and above all resilience. You can’t wish the dangers away and a vulnerable child intent on risk will find them.

The War on Smartphones will never, ever be enough. Compare it to the War on Drugs, which quickly became a war on people who use them, while the people with the power to make them harmful just continue building that power regardless.

Huge power is held on two sides of a deadly equation, with people who are damaged by drug use trapped from both sides. On the one hand, the wealthy elite who profit financially from human misery. On the other hand, the political elite who profit from it electorally. The first lesson on this was surely the prohibition of alcohol in the US.

Back to smartphones: if increasing numbers of children are poor, hungry, discriminated against and deprived of meaningful activity by a society that through a series of choices ends up seeing children suffer rather than investing to alleviate it, then the resilience to avoid harmful phone use and process the dangers of the online world will be in short supply. Meanwhile, very rich men who consider themselves above the law will find ways of monetising vulnerability.

There’s a pincer movement of power. The more power an individual has, the less likely they are to be caught in the trap.

I’m not against rules about smartphones by the way. And I’m definitely in favour of education about the dangers of the world we’re creating. But given the forces at work on either side of the power dynamic, we should be throwing everything at creating a well educated, empowered young generation, protected from the worst of poverty, homelessness, hunger, racism and sexism (and the stereotypes inflicted by white supremacy, patriarchy and the delusion held by so many people that we live in a meritocracy).

Or we can just carry on with the War on Smartphones, like we know we’re winning the War on Drugs, right?

Who remembers 2012 and that feeling that we had so much to be proud of about being British? Our public services and the ethos that we all deserve healthcare and education, our diversity, our history as a democracy - everything in fact that the startlingly fab Olympic and Paralympic opening ceremony celebrated.

Look, patriotism is complicated, I get that. I feel deeply conflicted about the very idea, because I don’t want to celebrate a history of white supremacy and colonialism. But I do want to celebrate the long tradition of immigration, the vibrancy and activism of civil society, the fact that - whatever Farage says - we’ve actually lurched far less decisively to the right than many of our European allies, or indeed the US.

Anyway, I am British. It’s a fact. Which means that flag that’s being weaponised by racism and xenophobia is meant to represent me too, and plenty of people who are nothing like me. It’s the Union Jack and as such it’s included people who have had many conflicts in the past. I object to the fact that it’s becoming a symbol of something I can’t identify with - can’t have anything to do with in fact.

I’d love us rational, compassionate, fair-minded Brits to reclaim the flag. Reclaim Britishness for its spectacular diversity, its ancient and modern victories and achievements, as well as the continuing struggle to learn from appalling injustices and atrocities that can’t be ignored. Reclaim Britishness for those of us who believe in that struggle and must fight to maintain its momentum.

It’s my flag too. Despite the very weird feeling I had when I put it at the top of this post, I want to prevent a world in which Britishness - which I belong to, like it or not - means hate, racism and violence.

It’s downright tragic that the government feels it has no political space to lean into the fight. I wish I could stick my (one good) foot in that door before it closes completely.

It’s not all about me or about staying as we are either. I would like refugees and others who move to our country to feel they can make their own peace with its history and feel they belong, however complex and lengthy that process might be and whether or not they or their descendants identify as British. We’re all on a journey together of understanding and coming to terms with our history.

I can’t claim credit for this thought. I had lunch with one of the cleverest people I know this week and I’ve been thinking it ever since. I’d love to see Union Jacks all over our streets with #MyFlagToo and any inclusive message you like. If I had to pick one it would be #RefugeesWelcome but anything would do. Retaking bridges, roundabouts and social media. If I had the power, influence or money, I’d make it happen. That’s my one wish for the Union Jack.

I’ve read and heard this a few times lately. I’be never been a fan of truisms and this one makes me so uncomfortable that I’ve been digging into my reaction to make sure it’s justified.

On the face of it, that statement calls out a classic example of correlation not being causation. It’s a small subset of the people who are concerned about immigration that are terrorising refugees up and down the country. But what sticks in my mind is the fact that many of those people themselves insist they’re not racists. They’re just worried about asylum seekers being criminals or using scarce public services or getting cushy treatment.

They are racists though. Singling out a group of a different ethnicity than you, stereotyping and demonising them, and calling for them to be made homeless - that’s racism. Demonstrating outside the accommodation of someone of a different ethnicity from you, because you don’t want them in your town? That is racist. It needs to be named as such, not given any pretext other than hate.

Truisms don’t need saying, that’s one of their chief characteristics. Don’t go all “not all men” about racism. All white people need to step up as allies. I don’t mean counter-protesting necessarily. I mean not looking the other way, calling out, and certainly not calling in.

I’m not saying no discussion or debate about immigration is ok. It’s important to be reliably informed, to ask questions - more important than ever perhaps, as misinformed, polarised anger is mounting. Actually, I have taken the trouble to inform myself and I’ve concluded that the movement of refugees is only going to increase with the combination of war and climate catastrophe, and that the UK and all wealthy nations need legal routes for migrants and coherent plans for enabling them to enrich our society and economy. Don’t agree? Fine, let’s talk about it (but not on social media thanks). But don’t immediately retreat into a fragile, defensive position. “I’m not the problem” is not useful. I don’t personally know anyone who is demonstrating against refugees right now. But I do know people who are going all “not all white people” about it.

When I was CEO of Shelter until recently, I was proud that we challenged racist narratives about housing straight on. My former colleagues are still doing it, countering racist narratives with facts. Because one “concerned but not racist” narrative is that somehow we can’t welcome refugees and migrants because of the housing emergency that we’ve got ourselves into through decades of poor policy choices.

It’s time for civil society organisations to unpick and challenge the idea that immigration undermines our public services, when in fact it provides their workforce.

That’s where I stand. I know it’s a tough political narrative which is why fact-based campaigns are needed, to open up space for better policy-making.

Meanwhile, just explain exactly what it is about immigration that concerns you. That could maybe start a useful discussion. Putting up an umbrella for racists to shelter under is becoming more dangerous by the day.

Today is the first anniversary of my second big, radical, scary life shift. On 19 August 2024 our London house was sold and we moved permanently to Dorset. It was part of a bigger change too, because although it wasn’t yet public, the Board of Shelter already knew that I would be stepping down as Chief Executive at the end of March 2025. After 34 years as an employee I was striking out on my own, in a new place away from family and friends.

My first big shift was when, aged 39, I suddenly knew I’d had enough of journalism and had to move into a field where I could try to make more of an impact for social justice. At that time, most people I knew couldn’t see why I would leave what was a successful career to go and work for a charity. And last year too, I found it hard to articulate why it was going to be a good idea to stop doing what had been my dream job.

In leadership roles for about 30 years, I’ve learned enough about myself to know that to say I’m OK with change is an understatement. I believe in change, I need it, I can handle the fear, I like risk. I know anyone who’s worked closely with me will recognise this, probably with some eye-rolling.

I never thought I would see the day when I would be happier knowing I never have to stay in London for long. “Londoner” was my identity, born and made, sharp edged and impatient, ambitious, pub-loving, never a smile for a stranger. I still love London’s diversity, I can’t explain how much the Thames in London means to me, I love hearing different languages around me, the anonymity of it.

Most of my work now is coaching individual leaders and teams. Before almost every appointment I go outside, walk or sit in the open air, try to think myself into my client’s situation. I actually don’t think I could have been a good coach in London. Honestly, coaching has made me a more empathetic and kinder person, and it’s the space around me that has enabled that. I tried hard to be a coaching leader, in all my senior roles, but I know I missed many opportunities to slow down and listen.

I’ve left behind a public profile, the satisfaction you get (if you’re egotistical enough to be a CEO in the first place) when people are impressed by the job you do, the platform and the status. It’s been a wrench, no point denying it. But that’s also the challenge and change I wanted, a big reason why I left. Being surrounded by open space, cliffs and meadows and forests, has always put all of that in perspective for me, and I wanted more of it: not just a reality check but a new reality. That’s why I love rock climbing: it’s just you and your own adventure in nature. Having always sought recognition and status – and having fought my own inner shame, especially as a woman, to acknowledge that I wanted those things, to be proud of what I achieved and not ashamed to say so – I wanted to see if I could still try hard, do my best, make a difference to others as just me. I wanted to see how it would affect me to feel some privacy, not to continually think about how my every move could be criticised, not to face what feels like a constant stream of decisions. I enjoyed all of that. Until I didn’t.

So now I’m a nobody living in what feels like the middle of nowhere (but could only feel like that to a Londoner!). I remember about six months after leaving journalism, I thought to myself “I’ve still got a huge amount to learn but the change has happened, and this is going to be good”. And the news from this nobody is, yes, this is good too.