7 August 2023
Tyron Surmon, a UK associate at More in Common, said: “While the ‘war on woke’ may play well in Westminster, it has little resonance with the public. Most don’t know what ‘woke’ means, and despite criticism, organisations like the National Trust are still viewed overwhelmingly positively by the public.”
7 August 2023
Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, which runs focus groups, revealed to the i in April that he’s noticed people assuming Starmer is an aristocrat with a hereditary title: “You get comments like, ‘Oh, yeah but he’s part of the aristocracy, what does he know?’… ‘Tony Benn gave his up, didn’t he? Why doesn’t Keir do the same?’ And of course, Benn had a hereditary title and had to give it up to be an MP. It suddenly clicked to me that all these people think it’s a title he was born with, and it’s acting as a drag.”
4 August 2023
“The words you’ll hear in focus groups are ‘I just called to get the crime reference number and that’s it because that’s all they’ll do now’,” said Luke Tryl, UK director of research group More in Common. There’s “no expectation it’ll be sorted,” he said.
Just 5.7% of reported crimes lead to a suspect being charged — down two thirds from 2015 — the criminal justice system is another public service many voters believe is no longer fit for purpose.
3 August 2023
Many MSPs also privately acknowledge the failure to bring the public with them on this subject, compounded by two horrific sexual assault cases by transgender women, Isla Bryson and Andrew Miller/Amy George, which came to light in the months after the bill’s completion. As a recent Guardian/More in Common focus group discovered, it was these cases rather than the legislation itself that had cut through to the voters.
30 July 2023
Luke Tryl, UK director of More In Common, a charity that tracks debates about contentious issues in Britain. says: “People welcome meaningful examples of corporate social responsibility, but what they don’t want is virtue signalling.
“But there’s a real grey area in which kind of inclusion initiatives fall into taking a political stance and which fall into actually just being a good corporate citizen – and that is a really tricky line for businesses to walk.”
29 July 2023
“If the Tories try to position themselves as just anti-green then the voters will kind of bristle at that,” Mr Tryl said. “But what will be an opportunity for the Tories is if they position themselves as green but sensible, which is what they were trying to do with Grant Shapps trying to constantly paint Keir Starmer as being in the pocket of Just Stop Oil.”
He added: “People hate Just Stop Oil. It actively alienates people from the cause.”