The media is flooded with images of politicians wearing hard hats on building sites. But why? It’s all too common to see leaders leap from budget debates straight into construction zones in order to point at things, what are they doing there? Shouldn’t they be discussing policy or working on other important reforms?
In 2024, it became totally normal to see Rishi Sunak at the builders’ merchant every other week, whilst Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don full PPE on a City of London building site, hoping to demonstrate their working-class credentials. These carefully staged backdrops are meant to signal action and empathy, yet critics sniff cynicism. As Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn once quipped in Prime Minister’s Questions, “food banks are not just a photo opportunity”. And veteran political commentator Matt Chorley observes that “no good ever comes” of such PR stunts, “and yet they can’t help themselves”. In short, the ritual of hi‑vis politics relentlessly repeats, even as policy stagnates – where has this trend come from, and what deeper issues does it represent?
Chasing headlines, not solving problems
Why does appearance often trump substance in Westminster? One answer comes from Dominic Cummings, former adviser to Boris Johnson. In a recent podcast interview, he lambasted Number 10 as little more than a “press entertainment service” – a bureaucracy built entirely “to respond to what the media says”. Under this model, the prime minister’s days are eaten up by reactive furores. “The Prime Minister’s time…is constantly pulled hither and thither by all of this craziness,” Cummings notes. Instead of steady, focused work on big issues, No.10 has become preoccupied with daily crises and sound bites, a process he dubs “chasing the bullshit in the media all day”. The result is that even basic reforms stall. Cummings recalls that “when we arrived in Number 10, there wasn’t even a file sharing system…The British Prime Minister did not have access to such a system”. Months of wrangling over Google Docs vs Microsoft Teams ensued, costing millions in consultancy fees and delaying everything else, even into the COVID crisis. He warns bluntly: if politicians spend four years “running around all day dealing with the media”, they “won’t actually have done anything” by the end of the term.
In such an environment, symbolism often trumps solutions. A recent Economist column notes how Westminster has fallen back on hollow catchphrases – a sure sign of shallow politics. Indeed, saying something is “not a good look” has become an easy, default put-down, an almost automatic response to any gaffe or crisis. As the Economist wryly observed, however, even that hackneyed phrase is itself “not a good look”. In effect, such rhetoric offers “neither solutions nor substance”. Political discourse risks shrinking to optics and scolding, rather than serious policy debate and action.
BS & bureaucracy
The obsession with media plays into a parallel problem: Britain’s creaking bureaucracy. Cummings argues that behind the PR persona lies an “incredibly old, centralised bureaucracy” that grinds at every task. Routine projects can take an absurdly long time because of rigid rules and compliance checks.
Unfortunately, the system quickly reabsorbs any innovation. Cummings lamented that once a crisis passes, “all the different parts of the system have basically said, the thing you created outside of the normal system now has to obey all the things it was specifically created to avoid”. In practice, heroic projects are disbanded and career incentives reward caution. Cummings notes wryly that the pandemic exposed perversity: those who “were most obviously repeatedly right” were driven out, while many who fumbled on became decorated. As he sums up, any official who calls out the slowness of a project will be “demoted and blacklisted,” while those who embrace the “most insane process” are “promoted”. In other words, the culture appears to select for timidity and form‑filling over creativity and results.
This chronic inertia helps explain why “policy atrophies and politics becomes showbiz”, as one analyst puts it. In the absence of effective action, ministers fill the vacuum with photogenic gestures – a helmet on site, a handshake at the food bank (often ending in disaster, as Rishi Sunak demonstrated by asking a homeless man if he works in business). Paradoxically, the more the government machine slows down in its own processes, the more tempting it is to chase headlines instead.
Training for rhetoric, not reform
Some of this emphasis on style goes back even further – to the way Britain’s leaders are created. The country’s elite political class is notoriously Oxford‑educated, and often honed their skills in debate and public speaking more than in policymaking. As Simon Kuper observed, the Oxford Union of the 1980s was a “nursery of the Commons” where bright students “honed the art of winning using jokes, rather than facts”. One alumnus recalled that at Oxford “a premium was placed on rapier wit rather than any fidelity to the facts”, making the Union “a perfect training ground for those planning to be professional amateurs”. Dry detail and data were jeered at as “boring”; instead, undergraduates mastered zingers and one‑liners to outgun opponents.
In short, our political leaders have often been coached to put on performances. Many Tory luminaries (and some Labour ones) cut their teeth at Eton and Oxford debating societies, learning to spin narrative and command attention. The union’s ethos, as Kuper notes, “encouraged a focus on rhetoric over policy”, rewarding theatricality with applause while real-world governance took backstage. It was a model where “speaking in this country, you can do anything” – a quip attributed to Churchill at the Union – rather than a first step towards actual decision‑making. No wonder that such habits carried over to Westminster: when ministers internalise that a soundbite gains more votes than detailed planning, they gravitate towards performative but shallow tactics.
Beyond the theatrics
In sum, the hard-hat tour has become emblematic of a deeper malaise. Labour and Conservative alike seem locked in a performance loop: define a headline, strike a pose, then move on to the next PR opportunity. Meanwhile, complex challenges – housing, health, climate, education – linger for lack of sustained attention. Commentators fear that this trend will only worsen public cynicism. As The Economist notes, Britain’s politics desperately needs “deeper engagement with policy challenges rather than…sound bites”. Vague assurances and photo-ops won’t, for example, rebuild Britain’s derelict social care system, tackle illegal immigration or overhaul long-stalled infrastructure plans. Worryingly, by the time governments realise this, valuable time and trust may have slipped away.
For now, every budget week and press release seems to be trailed by another selfie on scaffolding. The aim is to convey competence through imagery. But as critics point out, “no good ever comes” of these stunts unless they are backed by practical follow-through. The real test will be whether our leaders will ever swap the cameras for whiteboards – or whether for the next election, wearing high vis will remain the next best thing to having a coherent plan.
