Avsnitt
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Brexit was supposed to be “done”, yet Britain’s place in Europe is back at the top of the political agenda. With a reset under Keir Starmer, talk of rejoin from figures like Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting, and a more fragile world order, what would a genuinely settled relationship with the EU actually look like?
In this episode of The Policy Fix from Nesta, host Joe Owen is joined by Professor Anand Menon, director of UK in a Changing Europe, and chief economist at Nesta, Tim Leunig.
They weigh the economic cost of being outside the EU, estimated by the best academic work at six to eight percent of GDP, and ask whether the government’s strategy of selective alignment and sectoral deals adds up to a new phase or more of the same. The conversation covers free movement and the single market, the customs union, the politics of immigration and cost of living, why the EU has little incentive to make life easy for the UK, and whether rejoin is realistic with Nigel Farage an election away from Number 10.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for more on the policy problems that shape our lives, and how to fix them.
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The UK has no shortage of AI strategies, summits and action plans. But a stack of policy papers doesn't retrain a civil servant, fix a legacy data system, or scale a pilot beyond a single department. The real challenge is execution.
In this episode of Policy Fix, Nesta's podcast on the ideas and reforms that matter, host Joe Owen is joined by two people who know what it actually takes to get things done inside government: James Kuht, former member of the Prime Minister's Data Science Team at No.10 and now CEO of AI workforce company Pair, and Mallory Durran, who led the government's Incubator for AI and now heads Nesta's Applied Research and Methods team.
Together they argue that the UK is at a genuine inflection point but risks squandering it by mistaking activity for progress. They explore what separates real transformation from efficiency theatre: the internal barriers of skills, culture and creaking infrastructure; the pressures of Big Tech dependency and procurement inertia; and the question of whether the public sector has the risk appetite to actually innovate.
The UK does have real strategic advantages. This episode makes the case for what they are and how to build on them. But it ends with an honest question: are the reforms being discussed genuinely equal to the scale of the opportunity?
You will come away with actionable insights on bridging the implementation gap, building national AI capability beyond running pilots, and understanding the concrete reforms needed to turn policy ambition into operational reality.
What we cover:
- Why AI success in government comes down to senior leadership clarity, not technology
- The internal barriers blocking scale: skills, culture and legacy infrastructure
- How to manage AI risk by investing in workforce experimentation
- Whether the UK can compete with Big Tech or is inevitably dependent on it
- The bold bets that could genuinely transform health and education outcomes
- What departments need to switch off to make space for AI to deliver
Guests:
James Kuht, CEO, Pair | Former Prime Minister's Data Science Team, No.10 Downing Street
Mallory Durran, Head of Applied Research and Methods, Nesta | Former Director, Government Incubator for AI
Chapters:
00:00 "The magic can really start to happen"
01:14 Introduction
02:38 Where does AI sit on the hype spectrum?
05:07 How big is the prize for public services?
07:27 AI in action: planning data and the Extract tool
11:51 The biggest barriers to AI adoption in government
15:01 Why government needs tech-native leaders
17:25 Real risk vs perceived risk in the public sector
20:37 Experimentation as a risk management strategy
23:31 What breaks when you try to scale an AI pilot?
25:46 The funding problem: how government scales tech
28:06 Can government compete for AI talent?
32:11 Insource or outsource? Getting AI capability right
34:01 What would prove the government is serious about AI?
37:04 The unglamorous reforms that will actually matter
39:22 Practical advice: where to start with AI tomorrow
42:14 Outro
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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The UK is headed for another energy crisis. The war in Iran has choked energy markets and will be felt as another hit for inflation weary consumers and for the UK's beleagured economy.
Why the UK is so exposed to energy shocksHow this crisis differs from the gas spike caused by the invasion by Russia of UkraineWhat the government should and shouldn't do to support consumers on rising billsHow to make electricity cheaperWhat do to about North Sea OilHow to run a massive energy saving campaign
What should government do now? And how can it act to make sure that it doesn't waste the crisis?
In this episode of Policy Fix, host Joe Owen sits down with Nesta CEO Ravi Gurumurthy and director of Nesta's sustainable future mission, Madeleine Gabriel to untangle the acute effects of this latest energy shock from more long running challenges in the UK's energy economy.
They explore:
If you're interested or work in energy policy, climate change, or economics, this episode is essential listening.
Nesta is a politically impartial research and innovation charity designing, testing, and scaling solutions to society's biggest problems. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and teaser
01:11 Welcome and episode overview
02:30 How the war in Iran is affecting energy markets
03:57 Is the UK more exposed than other countries?
04:35 How this crisis compares to the 2022 Ukraine gas spike
07:00 Lessons from 2022: what should government do now?
09:42 When and how should government intervene?
13:05 Supporting households: targeted vs general subsidies
16:27 Turbocharging electrification through the crisis
22:16 Making the electricity-to-gas price ratio work
23:26 How to pay for it all
25:19 The North Sea oil debate
29:17 What households can do for themselves
32:08 The case for a national energy-saving campaign
33:43 The politics of decarbonisation
37:11 Closing thoughts: what should Keir Starmer prioritise?
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One in five children aged 3–5 already owns a smartphone and 95% of 13–15 year-olds have a social media profile. Is the UK's Online Safety Act failing to protect them and is a blanket ban on social media the answer?
In this episode of Policy Fix, host Joe Owen sits down with Tony Curzon Price, economist and policy fellow at Nesta, and Hannah Perry, Director at Demos, to untangle one of the most urgent policy debates of our time: how do we regulate social media for children without doing more harm than good?
They explore:
Why the Online Safety Act has 'barely touched the sides' and what went wrong
The evidence base for social media harm, from Jonathan Haidt's correlations to natural experiments tracking Facebook's campus rollout
Why Australia's age-based ban may push kids toward riskier, less regulated spaces
The case for product regulation - treating social media like a dangerous car that should be made safer, rather than trying to ban driving
Tony's bold proposal: a BBC Club Kids social network, launched by 2028
Hannah's vision for community-rooted digital spaces and epistemic sovereignty
What the government consultation should actually deliver, including bringing AI chatbots inside the scope of the Online Safety Act
If you work in policy, edtech, child welfare, or digital regulation or if you're a parent trying to make sense of a system that feels broken this episode is essential listening. Note that this episode was recorded before the recent judgement against Meta and YouTube in the US.
Nesta is a politically impartial research and innovation charity designing, testing, and scaling solutions to society's biggest problems. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Episode Chapters
00:00 What’s coming up: "A full-time job for parents": the social media treadmill
01:09 Welcome to Policy Fix. Introducing Joe, Tony Curzon Price & Hannah Perry
02:01 Setting the scene: is this a moral panic, or something genuinely different?
03:43 The stats: 1 in 5 toddlers has a phone; 95% of teens on social media
04:03 Evidence of harm. Child deaths, compulsive scrolling & displaced real-world activity
05:01 The causality debate: what Jonathan Haidt's research actually shows
06:30 The Facebook campus study — a natural experiment pointing to causality
07:33 The willingness-to-pay study: users know they're trapped and want out
08:25 How did we get here? The attention-harvesting business model explained
10:13 The algorithm arms race. Sarah Wynn-Williams and the Facebook whistleblower revelations
11:26 From Father Coughlin to Facebook: what radio history tells us about regulating media
13:23 Why the Online Safety Act has barely touched the sides
15:35 Why has this crisis bubbled back up the agenda now?
17:43 Should we ban social media for children? Tony makes the case against
19:05 The upside of social media why a blanket ban risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater
21:16 Hannah on the ban: 50% of parents would evade it, and it breaks trust with kids
23:34 Are "cuter" regulatory solutions also doomed to fail?
23:50 Tony's alternative: a public service construction of a good platform
26:44 Hannah's vision. BBC charter renewal, epistemic sovereignty & community digital spaces
29:31 What should the BBC practically do in the upcoming charter renewal?
32:26 The wider policy toolkit: no silver bullet, but an array of solutions
34:45 Tony on family-level solutions, network monitoring without surveillance
37:53 Australia's ban evaluation: is it reducing family conflict?
38:22 The BBC's new role in media literacy and cultural norm shift
39:05 What to watch for after the consultation closes
39:27 Hannah's ask: include AI chatbots in the Online Safety Act
40:08 Tony's ask: the BBC must become the platform, not feed it
41:52 One thing for Keir Starmer. Tony on cyberspace experimentation
42:49 Hannah's closing call: strengthen the Online Safety Act with safety-by-design
43:14 Sign-off
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Successive governments have promised to reform the British state. Most have left it harder to navigate than they found it. So what would genuinely fixing the way government works actually look like?
In this episode of The Policy Fix, Jill Rutter (Senior Fellow, Institute for Government) and Andrew Greenway (founder of A Bit Digital and former senior civil servant) join host Joe Owen to examine why Whitehall struggles to deliver: the civil service’s misaligned incentives, the gap between policy and delivery, and why Labour’s mission-driven government ran out of steam.
They also explore what the rare successes GDS, the vaccine taskforce, Brexit, Covid actually have in common, and what it would take to replicate that more broadly.
They end with a quickfire question: if Keir Starmer called you tomorrow and said he wanted to move fast and break things, what’s the one thing you’d tell him to break?
Frank, expert and full of practical insight, this is the state reform conversation that Whitehall needs to be having.
The Policy Fix is produced by Nesta.
Timecodes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:53 Do we have a government delivery problem?
00:06:18 What happened to Labour's mission-driven government?
00:12:07 Why do politicians struggle to get things done?
00:15:52 Has governing fundamentally changed?
00:22:12 What the Government Digital Service (GDS) got right
00:27:24 The “project” model: lessons from the Olympics
00:30:23 The policy vs delivery divide in Whitehall
00:34:06 Brexit and Covid: what government can do well
00:39:41 Do we need a wholesale review of the British state?
00:43:15 Structural reform: does No. 10 need more power?
00:48:31 What would you break? The final question
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The UK tax system has been described by experts as irrational, a mess and a nightmare. But what would genuinely reforming it look like - and why have successive chancellors ducked it for so long?
In this first episode of The Policy Fix, Tim Leunig (chief economist, Nesta) and Helen Miller (director, Institute for Fiscal Studies) break down the biggest structural problems in Britain’s tax system: the distortions created by how we tax employment versus self-employment versus dividends; the £80bn cost of VAT exemptions and why a flapjack is legally different from a muesli bar; why stamp duty is almost universally agreed to be a bad tax - and why it still exists; and whether wealth taxes are a serious policy option or an idea that sounds better than it works.
They also debate what a reforming Chancellor should actually do: go big and bold, or chip away incrementally? And they end with one policy each that they’d push through if they were Prime Minister for a day.
Sharp, evidence-based and surprisingly entertaining - this is UK tax policy for people who want to understand the real arguments.
The Policy Fix is produced by Nesta.
Timecodes:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:40 What's wrong with the UK tax system?
00:03:55 Why have chancellors avoided reform for so long?
00:10:11 The biggest structural problem: income, NI & dividends
00:13:12 The VAT chaos: flapjacks, gingerbread men & £80bn in exemptions
00:16:00 How to actually reform: what should a Chancellor do first?
00:22:49 Stamp duty & property tax: the case for abolition
00:27:04 Wealth taxes: effective policy or zombie idea?
00:31:44 Quick wins, capital gains & green/vehicle taxes
00:35:10 Political bravery: are politicians or the system to blame?
00:39:49 Expert commissions vs. the Chancellor acting now
00:43:42 One policy to transform the UK economy
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Something’s coming 🎙️
We’re stepping into the studio to tackle the UK’s biggest challenges - not just to debate the problems, but to find the fixes.
Make sure you subscribe to this brand new podcast from, Nesta.
