Forty years ago, a man named Sid bought some shares. Or at least that was the rallying cry of the Thatcher government, who launched the “Tell Sid” campaign to sell off British Gas to the public and, in the process, plant the seeds of a shareholder democracy.
Four decades later, that vision has withered. Today, retail investing in the UK is neither democratic nor popular. It’s confined to a minority, shrouded in jargon, and governed by a regulatory system that seems more comfortable shielding the public from risk than inviting them to share in reward.
But change is afoot. A new report — GetInvested — has begun to stir the debate about how we turn savers into stakeholders once again. What’s needed isn’t just another campaign or white paper. It’s a full-scale cultural shift in how we think about money, markets and ownership in Britain.
The bombshell new report, launched this week at an event held in Linklaters’ London offices, reveals that British households have missed out on an estimated £1 trillion of wealth due to a decades-long decline in public participation in UK public markets. The report highlights a pivotal opportunity in the summer of 2025 to reverse this trend and unlock a powerful engine for economic growth and personal prosperity for millions.
Callum Anderson, the Labour MP for Buckingham and Bletchley, gets this: “Transforming the retail investment landscape in Britain cannot be done in isolation,” he says. “This is a collective challenge that requires collective solutions.” He’s right. The barriers to broader investment aren’t just financial; they’re psychological and institutional. We’ve created a culture where investing is seen as the preserve of the elite and saving is deemed virtuous only if it sits idle in a cash ISA.
GetInvested is a blueprint for change
The GetInvested report, launched in the wake of the Chancellor’s Mansion House Compact in March, offers a blueprint for change. It recommends a public-facing campaign to promote investment literacy, a government-backed taskforce to unify industry voices, and — crucially — a GetInvested Charter that would commit government and industry to the principles of inclusion, education and long-termism. This isn’t a flash-in-the-pan PR exercise. It’s a call to action, and one that arrives not a moment too soon.
- Analysis in the GetInvested report reveals ordinary Britons have missed out on an estimated £1 trillion in wealth over the last 60 years by not investing in the stock market
- A stark comparison shows how a regular investor would have become a multi-millionaire (£2.3m), while a diligent saver would have less than a third of that (£617k).
- In 1963, UK individuals owned 54% of the stock market. By 2022, this had plummeted to just 10.8%. Had ownership remained at its previous level, the British public would be an estimated £1.045 trillion wealthier today.
- Popular IPOs like Royal Mail and Raspberry Pi saw overwhelming demand from the public, yet ordinary investors were scaled back by as much as 86%, shutting them out of major British success stories.
- Over half of UK adults with £10,000 or more are holding it in cash, losing value to inflation, while a simple shift in mindset could unlock huge potential for personal and national prosperity.
James Deal, co-CEO of RetailBook, points out what’s at stake. “We’re at a pivotal moment for retail capital markets,” he says. “GetInvested is more than a campaign: it’s a movement to put the power of the markets back into the hands of the people.”
He and others believe that the financial system must be redesigned to serve not just institutions, but individuals, especially in a country where defined benefit pensions are vanishing and the average citizen is increasingly responsible for their own financial destiny.
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Retail investors are locked out of the market
But here lies the paradox: the public is simultaneously being urged to invest while being protected from it. Retail participation in IPOs, secondary offerings and debt instruments has been choked by regulatory barriers designed to prevent consumer harm, yet these same rules have often prevented consumer opportunity.
Ruben Peralta Silverstone of the London Stock Exchange puts it plainly: “We’ve essentially incentivised companies and the advisory community to not include retail participation in their capital raising activity.” The result? Retail investors get locked out, and companies turn to foreign exchanges for listings.
To be fair, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has shown signs that it’s ready to adapt. Dom Holland, the FCA’s Director of Market Oversight, says: “We’re committed to rebalancing risk, to fuel growth and get people invested in markets.”
This is encouraging, but it must go beyond consultation papers and regulatory tweaks. It requires a new social contract around investing: one where risk is not hidden from the public, but explained to them.
Voting with your capital
There’s a danger, of course, in romanticising mass investing. The meme-stock mania of recent years shows how easily speculation can run wild. But the solution isn’t paternalism. It’s education. It’s engagement. It’s trust. If people can be trusted to vote in elections, surely they can be trusted to vote with their capital. What we need is not to eliminate risk, but to democratise it.
There is an economic imperative too. The UK needs growth. Not the kind conjured through cheap credit or property bubbles, but real, productive growth. That means financing new industries, building businesses, and ensuring the rewards are spread beyond institutional shareholders and private equity funds. As Deal notes, “We also have visibility of a pipeline of private companies that have selected London as their listing venue… the clock is ticking.”
What should happen next?
So what should happen next? First, the government must move swiftly to endorse and implement the GetInvested Charter. Second, regulators must tear down the outdated rules that discourage public participation in public markets. Third, we need a visible, national effort to make investing feel like an act of modern citizenship, accessible, inclusive, and vital.
Britain once led the world in building a culture of mass ownership. It can do so again. But this time, we must do more than tell Sid. We must equip him. Support him. And welcome him back into the market.
If not now, when?
