Re:View 23 May 2025
Chief Executive
Quote of the week
“The years ahead must be ones not of managed decline, but of renewal. It's time to be bold. It's time to remake the State. Re:State: welcome back.”
Lord Mark Sedwill, former Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service
Welcome to the first edition of ‘The Re:View’ — don’t worry, it’s still our much-loved reflection on what’s happened in the last seven days, but revamped for our new incarnation as Re:State. ‘The Week’, but better!
Speaking of which… in case you’ve been off grid or digitally detoxing and missed it — because how else could it have passed you by? — Reform is now Re:State. This is a big moment for us, so I hope you don’t mind indulging me in this first Re:View. Normal service will resume next week!
Goodbye Reform, hello Re:State
In a nutshell, having failed to get The Electoral Commission to stop the Brexit Party from renaming itself as Reform UK, and with the rising electoral success of the party, it had become untenable for us to continue as Reform think tank. So after almost a quarter of a century of shaping the policy debate as Reform, we’ll now be doing so as Re:State.
For more on why we’ve become Re:State you can read my launch blog, and for how we picked Re:State you can listen to this interview with Matt Chorley, both are here. I was also delighted to chat to Politico about the process, and you can read the interview in this week’s London Influence newsletter aptly titled ‘When Nigel nicks your name’.
I also want to draw your attention to this collection of mini essays that we published to mark the launch of our new name, which really is brilliant and provocative, with 23 articles all making the case for a radical remaking of the State. We couldn’t be prouder to have such an esteemed group of people help us launch this new chapter.
Read of the week…
Obviously the read of the week is that ‘Re:Think’ essay collection. I’m confident once you start reading you’ll want to read them all, but to help, I asked each of the Re:State team for their favourite. After a lot of ‘it’s too hard to pick one’ style statements, here’s the results, no explanation I’ll leave it to you to judge!
Joe Hill picked Mike Bracken, Sylvie Macdonald loved Rachel Wolf’s, Florence Conway went for Lord Jim O’Neill, Simon Kaye “thinks" it’s Lord Mark Sedwill’s (which my quote of the week is from), Rosie Beacon picked Dr Penny Dash, Sean Eke picked Polly Mackenzie, and Alice Semark opted for Lord Michael Gove’s.
We’d love to know your favourite — drop us a line, or @ us at @restate_thinks or @re-state.bsky.social.
(Re:)Meet the team!
Over the next few weeks we’re going to spotlight a member of the team so you can get to know us a bit better, but for now, here we all are in a new team photo…
And in fact, you can join this small but perfectly formed team as we are currently looking for an Events & Partnerships Assistant or Officer (dependent on experience). So get applying, or share with anyone you think might be interested in joining what Politico called “top think tank” Re:State!