Letter 30 — To Rachel Reeves MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
From economic strain to civic preparedness
Date: 11 November 2025
Recipient: Rachel Reeves MP — Chancellor of the Exchequer
Context
Week 5 of One Letter a Day turns toward Westminster.
After a month spent tracing climate delivery from communities to city halls, these letters ask how national politics can reconnect the country’s economic story with planetary reality.
As COP30 unfolds abroad, Britain’s domestic conversation feels preoccupied with short-term costs.
This letter to Rachel Reeves MP, Leeds’s own Chancellor of the Exchequer, argues that the cost-of-living crisis is itself the first ripple of the climate crisis — and that real resilience will depend on how fiscal choices empower local civic capacity to carry the transition.
Letter
Dear Chancellor,
The cost-of-living crisis is often treated as a temporary economic shock. Yet it may be the first clear signal of what the climate crisis means in practice: pressure on food, fuel, housing and health all at once. If today’s inflation is the preview, tomorrow’s instability could be far more severe unless we act on the causes rather than the symptoms.
I’m writing as part of One Letter a Day, a civic correspondence that began here in Leeds and now extends nationally. Each letter explores how the climate emergency touches ordinary life and how institutions can keep purpose alive when politics drifts elsewhere.
Leeds, your own city, has tried to stay ahead of the curve. It shows that civic resolve still exists, but national leadership is needed to turn scattered local progress into a durable public direction. At COP30, the UK’s credibility depends on whether its promises abroad are matched by delivery at home.
That delivery cannot come only through markets or large infrastructure. It needs a living network beneath them: community energy, local food, mutual-aid and repair groups, neighbourhood projects that build resilience from the ground up. These are the social circuits that will hold the country together when global systems strain. Yet they survive mostly on goodwill, not recognition or support.
How can national policy begin to see this civic capacity as infrastructure in its own right, essential to security, not ornamental to it? How can investment and regulation empower communities to take responsibility, rather than waiting for central systems that may falter under future shocks?
If the Treasury placed climate and social resilience at the heart of economic planning, the cost-of-living crisis could become a moment of clarity – proof that preparing for climate is also how we protect people. The alternative is a country always reacting, never steering.
With appreciation,
Vivien Badaut
Founder, One Letter a Day
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Tomorrow’s letter continues Week 5’s focus on political leadership, turning to Katie White MP, Minister for Climate – another climate figure from Leeds – asking how Westminster can translate climate concern into a stable public mandate for sustained action.