Is the road to progress paved with think tanks? Part 2

Cool policy projects are now being built in the UK. Many such cases.

Over three years ago, before I landed my first full time job in a think tank, I was already opining about big gaps in the UK’s policy landscape.

By 2021, I had become fairly ‘progress-pilled’. Working as a consultant for the (then) Office for AI - on the commercialisation of AI R&D - I was becoming convinced that better state capacity and more ambitious scientific/AI innovation was going to be essential for unwinding the UK from its period of economic stagnation.

I was enthused by the emerging ‘progress studies’ movement, and was delighted when a brand new think tank was set up to embody some of these ideals.

“Last week, a new think tank signalled a step-change in this erratic ecosystem. The Institute for Progress (IfP), set up by US innovation gurus Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp, aims to triangulate these ideas further, focusing on meta-science (the science of science), immigration, and biosecurity. Not messing about, IfP already has produced several policy papers, covering housing zoning reform, longevity research, and funding people, not projects.

This is a great start, but as Question Time Supremo™ Keir Starmer says, I would ‘encourage them to go further’. I think it is time for Progress Studies to slowly make more substantial interventions into mainstream politics..

The big question I have in my head is therefore: where are the UK IfP equivalents?

My hot takes continued..

“Having more Progress Studies adjacent organisations like these in the UK would really help pick some of the low hanging fruit around public policy in this domain in the UK.

If I had a pot of funding and wanted to make an impact in the U.K. policy space, throwing seed funding here would definitely be in my top 5 high-impact decisions.”

Fast forward to today, and the universe has finally delivered on this.

UK Day One, a small but influential policy group that crowdsource pro-growth policy proposals, is establishing themselves as a new think tank: the Centre for British Progress.

Their founding essay is well worth a read. Thoughtful, inspirational and packed with ambition. Having just read ‘Abundance’, by Ezra Klein, and Derek Thompson, this essay read as if it could have been the opening/closing chapter of the British version of this book.

I personally know the BPI’s Co-Directors, David Lawrence and Julia Garayo Willemyns, pretty well. And I have been really impressed by the impact that they have had on UK policy so far, especially on areas of planning, infrastructure, and AI.

And it’s not just Julia and David that impress me. The entire team and fellows do. I have had the pleasure working with many of them: through policy work at the Tony Blair Institute (Laura Ryan and Ben Johnson) and in government during my time at DSIT, as well as doing community organising at TxP (Andrew Bennett).

They are wicked smaat. They approach policy ideas in a creative way. But above all, they are people that just want to get stuff done.

And that matters. Because building a new policy movement isn’t just about good ideas. It’s about grit. Institutional inertia, incumbent interests, and a whole cast of gerontocrats will try to slow things down. But the stamina and entrepreneurialism I see in this team could be the difference between a think tank that fades — and one that shapes the future.

There are also a few important people behind the scenes that really helped to pull this off. The likes of John Myers, Ronit Kanwar, and Tom Milton played key roles in this process.

I’m so excited to see what CBP ends up achieving. There is real momentum with a new community of ambitious, pro science and tech voices that are bringing practical answers to some of the biggest challenges that regular people face in the UK.

And for the first time in a while, it feels like the country might be listening.