On Thursday the nation goes to the polls. Regular readers will know we aren’t going to tell you where to put your cross – but we will be informing whoever enters Downing Street what policies would help the UK’s entrepreneurs.
Access to talent is key. Talk to the founders of Britain’s startups and scaleups and they will tell you getting the right people in to help them grow is their number one issue. Part of the solution is education and training – which we covered last week – but there is no getting away from the fact that we need to be welcoming to talented individuals who want to come to our country and contribute to our economy. In Passport to Progress we set out in detail how to do this.
The competition for talent will only get more intense, which is why Germany has just launched the Opportunity Card. It allows those who qualify to live in the country for up to one year while looking for work, rather than requiring an employer to sponsor them beforehand. If Trump returns to the White House, we need policies ready to roll to pinch any of their disaffected coastal entrepreneurial talent who have had enough. Not least because Trump has revealed that he wants to let more top international graduates stay in the US.
Money matters too. In Backing Breakthrough Businesses we sought to tackle the challenge of why some companies aren’t able to scale to their full potential in the UK. It had a number of recommendations, including bolstering the independence of the British Business Bank to enable it to act in the best possible way and over a longer time horizon, which was covered in The Times. There is a playbook on how to do this (and how not to) that should be required reading for everyone in government: Josh Lerner’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
In The Way of the Future we covered other areas where state capacity could be increased, including in my essay on the (digital) future of the state with Kirsty Innes. There is much to write – and I will – about improving the functioning of the state. (Some of which I picked up at today’s Civic Future conference, where Lord Adonis and Dominic Cummings spoke, agreeing on a lot more than you might expect.)
A new government also needs to get Britain building. In Strong Foundations we made the case for policies like liberalising Green Belt rules and community land auctions to get housing and office space in places and at prices businesses and employees can afford. Also, watch this space for an upcoming report with ideas that would significantly boost the UK’s clean energy capacity.
Finally, we need responsive regulators. As Andrew Bennett argued in our Operation Innovation essay collection it’s time to properly fund and empower the regulators. As he wrote at the time (though it's risen up the agenda since), this might be one of today’s most neglected policy levers, but one which has a disproportionately high return on investment. As Sir Patrick Vallance told Andrew this week: “If you're a regulator, the incentive to take risks is virtually zero.” We’ll also continue to make the case for turning the UK into a ‘testbed nation’.
All this is a rather long-winded way of saying there are lots of ways to make the UK better. As our Patron Steve Rigby wrote in the The Times this week: “there is plenty of hope out there. The economy is heading to better times, inflation has been largely tamed, interest rates will fall and we will see political stability for the first time in half a decade. Now is the time to gain a head start on the global stage and take this fight out to the world.”
Magic Number
We’re advertising for three roles: a researcher; someone to run our events and head of our Female Founders Forum; and we’ve launched an internship programme. Please share far and wide.
We obviously hope that people stay forever, but anyone joining will be following in some impressive footsteps. Our alumni have gone on to advise Prime Ministers, become a senior editor on a national newspaper, work within government, and much else besides.
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