In a year filled with questions, our readers had answers. From Washington to Westminster, from trade wars to the local weather, audiences had strong opinions and often a surprising optimism. What follows is a snapshot of how audiences made sense of the year that was 2025.
TARIFFS: TRUMP VS. THE WORLD
Trump’s second term set the tone early. Around the world, people felt his renewed trade wars less as abstract policy than as a direct hit to their wallets.
Internationally, the verdict was clear: Tariffs were a live stress test on the global economy. Yet when questions turned to domestic policy, specifically immigration, frustration hardened into outright disapproval, with many in the States describing Trump’s approach as fundamentally misguided.
Source: MS Now
LABOUR’S LOVE LOST
Yet 2025 also showed that the US does not have a monopoly on anger over migration policy. On the other side of the Atlantic, UK readers were just as likely to describe their own government’s immigration policies in bleak terms.
Here we see a rare kind of transatlantic symmetry: very different governments, very similar public unease. That mood carried straight into Labour’s first full year in power, where hopes for stability quickly collided with questions about Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Rachel Reeves’s budget: whether it had broken manifesto promises and misled the public.
Source: Times of London, Yahoo UK
AFFORDABILITY
Underneath debates over the budget sat a more basic preoccupation: prices, an issue on both sides of the Atlantic.
Our vote for the economic concept of the year? The K‑shaped economy: with an AI‑fuelled stock‑market boom on one branch and day‑to‑day anxiety on the other.
Source: Yahoo UK
AI: HELP OR HINDERANCE?
Is Artificial Intelligence all it’s cracked up to be? When confronted with the new technology readers had cautious sense of optimism.
Source: Times of London
The GenAI touch was welcome in some spheres of life and shunned in others. How does your use map on?
Slide through the gallery to see how readers voted.
Nothing illustrated our AI ambivalence more neatly than self‑driving cars. Across anglophone audiences, readers were polarised as to whether they would take a ride in an autonomous vehicle.
Slide through the gallery to see how readers voted.
One AI issue that’s not going anywhere: the technology’s growing carbon footprint. Whether AI and its concomitant data centers will be a boon or bane for the environment is still an open question.
CAUGHT IN NET ZERO
On the goal of net zero, readers were torn between urgency and fatigue. In the UK, some wondered whether the rush towards zero emissions was worth it, while others focused instead on the practical barriers still standing in the way.
Source: Yahoo UK
Source: Times of London
Yet even if the climate was a source of anxiety, at least readers could still enjoy what the weather had to offer.
Source: Yahoo UK
LOOKING FORWARD TO LOOKING BACK
Funny how we seem to appreciate thunderstorms more in the dry months of summer. Are summer storms really better? Or is it nostalgia?
What’s sure is that this year our polls captured not only the day’s hottest takes but also those slow burn feelings, too.
In this spirit we have some questions for you: Are you the nostalgic type? Or do you live exquisitely in the moment? Let us know below:
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