Future Leaders Essay Collection 2025
CGP is excited to announce the launch of the 2025 Future Leaders Essay Collection, marking the end of what has been a very successful 2025 Future Leaders programme.
As the world becomes more complex and uncertain, it is vital that our future MPs are fully prepared for the challenges they will face. CGP’s Future Leaders programme has aimed to do just that. Over the six months of the programme, the cohort attended two policy retreats at Windsor Castle and Kelmarsh Hall, hearing from a range of experts and policy practitioners. This year’s programme also included a visit to Jordan where Future Leaders met Jordanian officials, parliamentarians, refugees and NGO’s, offering vital first-hand experience and knowledge about a beacon of stability amid a volatile region and learning how development and security are inherently interlinked.
The essays compiled here offer a snapshot of the experiences and takeaways from the last six months. Future Leaders from across the political spectrum have been able to put their experiences and insights onto paper, providing valuable assessments of the world we live in today and how the United Kingdom can best apply the means at its disposal.
2025 Future Leaders Essay Collection Launch event, Old Queen Street Cafe
An event was held at the Old Queen Street Cafe on the 29th January 2026 to celebrate the launch of this essay collection.
CGP were honoured to hear from keynote speakers at the event, Rt Hon Dame Penny Mordaunt DBE, former Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Defence, and Secretary of State for International Development, The Baroness Curran, former Minister of State at the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero, and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and His Excellency Ambassador Manar Dabbas, Ambassador of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the UK and non-resident Ambassador to Ireland and Iceland. Each of the speakers offered their own unique, valuable insight into their experiences and imparted vital advice to our outgoing cohort of Future Leaders.
The event provided the perfect setting for the Future Leaders to reflect not only on their essays and discuss their findings but also offered a space for the candidates to reflect on the programme itself, on what their takeaways had been from the multitude of experiences and pieces of advice they had received and discuss how they could take these insights into their future careers, helping them to become fully rounded and prepared Members of Parliament.
Foreword
The Baroness Manningham-Buller LG DCB FRS
Baroness Manningham-Buller LG DCB FRS headed Britain’s Security Service (MI5) from 2002 to 2007, before serving as Chair of the Wellcome Trust from 2015 to 2021. Baroness Manningham-Buuller is a crossbench peer, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a former president of the respected foreign policy think-tank Chatham House. She was Chair of Council at Imperial College for four years, and has delivered the prestigious BBC Reith Lectures.
“I am writing this shortly before Christmas 2025. It is hard to be optimistic about the year ahead. Since these essays were written, the US National Security Strategy has been announced with its repudiation of the US post-war foreign policy, based on an alliance with the European democracies. Russia is trying to destroy Ukraine and elsewhere is using sabotage, assassinations, cyber attacks, drones, terrorism, influence operations, threats to cables and more. The climate emergency is slipping down the international agenda. Aid is being cut when soft power should be seen as a vital component of hard power. Then there is China, loss of jobs through AI, looming health crises from widespread rejection of vaccines- the list could go on.
But in the spring I met the cohort who are the authors of these essays. I was heartened. I applaud people who want to make a difference. Unlike many I think that politics can be a noble profession and I was delighted, whatever part of the political spectrum they came from, that they wanted to improve the lives of their communities, strengthen the UK and make the world a better place.”
