Britain’s national story and why it matters for growth

The UK as an open, global power

Last week, I was at a gathering of academics, investors and policymakers discussing economic growth. In the conversation, we trotted through the usual list of policy obsessions, from planning and energy bills to AI, but kept circling back to a bigger question: what makes Britain distinctive and how should it chart a course through geopolitical gales? Or to put it another way, what is Britain’s national story?

That might sound fluffy and intangible, but it matters. The new third runway at Heathrow or the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, announced by Rachel Reeves last week, may only come to fruition over the next decade. But if these policies form part of a broader vision for the country, they could have a more immediate impact by instilling confidence in consumers, companies, and investors. A credible national story might awaken animal spirits from their long hibernation.

The story I would tell would have sounded banal fifteen or twenty years ago. It is that Britain should open up. With our history as an open, trading nation—the first global power—we should be the most open country in the world: more open to new talent, new technology and new investment. Openness, combined with our stability, reliability and moderation, are enduring strengths and increasingly rare.

What might that mean in practice? Let’s take migration as a starting point.

Migration

The UK should seek to become a magnet for the best global talent, just as the US is (and currently risks losing). Could the UK commit to giving the top 1% of graduates in every country a five-year work visa and a guaranteed path to UK citizenship? (Based on UNESCO’s estimate of 60 million graduates per annum globally, that would mean 600,000 people would be eligible; if that’s too many, we could introduce a lottery within the top 1%.) When every other country, including the US, is turning against aspiration, a clear entitlement might serve as a tangible illustration of the British Dream.

In a similar vein, the UK awards 18,000 PhDs each year, which compares favourably, given our size, with roughly 40,000 in the US and 80,000 in China. While the UK's main challenge is translating and commercialising scientific knowledge, why not build on the ‘science superpower’ claim and aim to double the number awarded, thereby matching the US? We could even offer £50,000 of funding to 10,000 STEM PhDs who want to build businesses.

You might think this is political suicide in the current climate. However, it is striking how well policies such as an Australian-style points system poll, suggesting that the public is relatively open to high-skill migration. At the other end of the scale, there is also strong public support for those fleeing war, conflict and repression, as we saw with Ukraine and Hong Kong. (While there is now a consensus that we should do whatever it takes to boost economic growth, neither party is prepared to argue that we must also tackle demographic decline, which is linked to lower productivity.)

Trade and investment

Trade with other countries is facing new barriers, particularly Trump’s tariffs and concerns over exposure to China. Again, I think we should double down on openness.

First, we should avoid retaliating against any Trump tariffs on the basis that any countermeasures will harm our own economy, raise inflation and do little to shift US behaviour.

Second, we should improve trade relations with the EU. In practice, this could mean tackling non-tariff barriers and pursuing sectoral deals where we align in key industries. This would be more feasible if we accepted the EU Youth Mobility Scheme, proposed by the European Commission last year, which would allow 18-to-30-year-olds in the UK and EU to reside in each other's countries for four years.

Third, we should pursue a Free Trade Deal with India. While China and Europe are in demographic decline, India is heading in the opposite direction, with its population set to reach 1.5 billion by 2030. The deal may not make a major difference in the next five years, but it could be transformational over the next fifty. India will want significant visa liberalisation; given our own demographic forecasts, seeing this as an opportunity rather than a constraint could unlock a higher-ambition deal.

Of course, the most difficult decision is our approach to China. The UK, like others in the EU, lacks a clear strategy and remains torn between economic opportunity and security concerns. I worry that our ability to navigate these trade-offs is weak, given how economic and security issues are managed in separate government silos. Who has the knowledge on both dimensions to make the right call?

But as we are seeing with DeepSeek, solar PV and batteries, Chinese technology is ground-breaking. Chinese EVs are set to dominate the global market, outcompeting others on range and price. In the 1980s, US car companies dismissed Japanese manufacturers and did not just lose the battle—they lost the war for market share permanently. The best way for Britain to learn from China might be to replicate what we did with Nissan, Honda and other Japanese manufacturers by inviting BYD to construct factories and build EVs here. That would also provide the scale of domestic EV production needed for battery plants. From a security perspective, having these cars built in Britain rather than imported might allow us to impose greater transparency and monitoring of the technology.

Building political consent for openness

It is hard to find a political party or politician championing these policies anywhere in the world while being electorally successful. Economic stagnation and high levels of low-skill migration, combined with the rage machine dynamics of social media, undermine support for openness.

To some extent, this is a vicious circle. Societies will only open up when their economies improve, but economic improvement itself relies on greater openness.

To win the argument, you need to start by earning a hearing with an electorate unwilling to listen. That requires addressing the concerns that lead us into a zero-sum debate head-on: building more homes, cutting energy bills and reducing NHS waiting times. It might mean specific measures that deal with concerns over migration: whether through ID cards, reducing low-skill migration, or an agreement with France to reduce small boat crossings, in exchange for a controlled safe routes programme.

Addressing those concerns then creates the space to make the positive case. Just as the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony told a powerful story about Britain, we need to articulate a compelling vision of the UK as an open, global power—secure in its identity, yet far more welcoming than most of Europe or the US. Our historic ties to other countries, our stability and moderation, can still be a source of national pride. Indeed, in a world of increasing fragmentation, Britain could choose to be the country more than any other that welcomes talent, fosters global trade and embraces technological progress.

What I’m reading/thinking/watching

Capital Shocks and UK Regional Divergence by Michiel Daams, Philip McCann, Paolo Veneri, Richard Barkham: fascinating paper on how the 2008 financial crisis generated a flight to safety of capital into London, at the expense of other UK regions - and has never recovered since.

Lessons and Impacts of a Remote Early Childhood Education Program in Hard-To-Access Settings in Lebanon: A Randomized Controlled Trial by Global TIES for Children. It’s devastating to see the Trump assault on aid. One program that was lampooned was Ahlan Sim Sim - a collaboration I was part of between the International Rescue Committee and Sesame Workshop. One of three RCTs conducted shows particularly exciting results - a combination of an eleven-week remote learning program plus a parenting support programme. Effects on child development are similar to in-person pre-school programmes around the world.