The Centre for British Progress is a non-partisan think tank on a mission to accelerate and shape an era of British growth and progress; evolved from @UKDayOne.
London, United Kingdom
Joined January 2024
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The results of our 2026 UK Growth Survey are in!
Thank you to the 100+ economists & researchers who filled in the survey. You can see the full results and analysis here 👇
Every year @BritishProgress asks Britain's top economists and policy researchers what the UK should do to increase growth.
🚨 As covered exclusively for @thetimes this morning, the 2026 growth survey results are now in! 🚨
This was our biggest survey yet with over 100 responses.
📉 The bad news: Britain's public finances, with inflation hit by external shocks, are in a bad state.
📈 The good news: the UK is not without options. There is much that can be done on the supply side reforms, & smarter fiscal policy can raise revenue while supporting growth.
Here are the 12 most interesting results 👇
*1. Where should the government prioritise spending political capital?*
We asked "In what areas should the Government invest more (or less) political capital to achieve growth?"
NB this was explicitly not a question about spending – that's the next one.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Exclusive: Andy Burnham is considering handing mayors additional powers to speed up mass transit projects in the Budget, as a new research paper found this could cut several years off the timetable of West Yorkshire’s trams. yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/pol…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Our proposals for the next wave of devolution on the front page of today’s @yorkshirepost 👇
(Link below)
From 2028, Britain will have 18 mayoral authorities but mayors still lack key powers for building public infrastructure like trams & roads.
🚨 Today @BritishProgress and @ThinkLabour publish our paper with @AnyaM8_, @1jamesHowat and @johnrmyers on the FOUR powers mayors need 🧵
Centre for British Progress retweeted
From 2028, Britain will have 18 mayoral authorities but mayors still lack key powers for building public infrastructure like trams & roads.
🚨 Today @BritishProgress and @ThinkLabour publish our paper with @AnyaM8_, @1jamesHowat and @johnrmyers on the FOUR powers mayors need 🧵
Centre for British Progress retweeted
The scandal here is that Britain consistently overspends but under-delivers on infrastructure.
Our @BritishProgress study with @BritainRemade found that we spend 30% more than comparable OECD countries on transport & energy infrastructure, but deliver a fifth less.
Overall we face a 65% cost premium for building in Britain: for the same money, we could have a lot more if we built like European countries do.
The only people who benefit from this system are rent-seeking sectors, like consultants and lawyers employed to ensure compliance with complex regulations. Meanwhile it's ordinary people, like taxpayers and Miatta's constituents, who lose out.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
The PM is expected to signal an end to the triple lock today. But what are the options for reform, and how much money do they save?
@BritishProgress (namely, @matthewgstubbs) has made a tool to compare the different ideas on the table.
For instance, you can compare @timleunig's '5-year triple lock' with @resfoundation's 'smoothed triple lock' proposal (originally proposed by @TorstenBell and @lauracgardiner) to see that they each would save around £60bn by 2047, and deliver an annual state pension of around £27k (nominal).
As you can see, the amount of money that can be saved – particularly over a longer time-horizon, is enormous.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
1/4 Everyone agrees that the Fingleton Review needs to be implemented to get our nuclear costs down. Yet progress towards implementing these recommendations is stalling – more and more of them are off track.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
It has been about six months since the Fingleton Review, and on most of the recommendations, nothing has been done. The review is clearly being slow-walked by departments, and it isn't obvious anyone has a grip on it.
We built the tracker because we suspected this would happen. I thought public accountability might speed things up. Apparently not? Let's change that.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Our yearly Growth Survey is out! We asked over 100 economists and policy researchers what the UK should and perhaps more importantly, should not do to get growth going again.
📈 What’s in:
Planning reform
Faster grid connections
Nuclear regulatory reform
North Sea licences
📉 What’s out:
Price controls
Wealth taxes
Exit taxes
More spending on welfare and state pensions
Every year @BritishProgress asks Britain's top economists and policy researchers what the UK should do to increase growth.
🚨 As covered exclusively for @thetimes this morning, the 2026 growth survey results are now in! 🚨
This was our biggest survey yet with over 100 responses.
📉 The bad news: Britain's public finances, with inflation hit by external shocks, are in a bad state.
📈 The good news: the UK is not without options. There is much that can be done on the supply side reforms, & smarter fiscal policy can raise revenue while supporting growth.
Here are the 12 most interesting results 👇
*1. Where should the government prioritise spending political capital?*
We asked "In what areas should the Government invest more (or less) political capital to achieve growth?"
NB this was explicitly not a question about spending – that's the next one.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
FINALLY, check out this tool built by @matthewgstubbs to explore the survey results data. You can also see how different AI models responded to the survey, and how closely they tracked experts' views.
(@grok 4.6 and @claudeai's Fable 5.1 were closest to the experts!)
growthsurvey.britishprogress…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Huge thanks to @matthewgstubbs for pulling the survey together, @pdmsero for helping design the questions, and to all our 100+ respondents!
You can read the full results and analysis here: britishprogress.org/reports/…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Thank you also to @conky_k for covering the story in @thetimes today, featuring quotes from @johnfingleton1, @frencheconomics and @markkoyama.
You can read the piece here: thetimes.com/uk/politics/art…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Every year @BritishProgress asks Britain's top economists and policy researchers what the UK should do to increase growth.
🚨 As covered exclusively for @thetimes this morning, the 2026 growth survey results are now in! 🚨
This was our biggest survey yet with over 100 responses.
📉 The bad news: Britain's public finances, with inflation hit by external shocks, are in a bad state.
📈 The good news: the UK is not without options. There is much that can be done on the supply side reforms, & smarter fiscal policy can raise revenue while supporting growth.
Here are the 12 most interesting results 👇
*1. Where should the government prioritise spending political capital?*
We asked "In what areas should the Government invest more (or less) political capital to achieve growth?"
NB this was explicitly not a question about spending – that's the next one.
Centre for British Progress retweeted
NEW REPORT from @Ezra_Cohen_ for @BritishProgress on what we can do to tackle dodgy shops. We all see them all the time, but no one seems to do anything about them. Ezra has an answer!
Read all about it 👇
Centre for British Progress retweeted
In 2018, Baltic Bognor in Sussex was found selling illegal cigarettes. Same again in 2022. In 2026, the owner was done for money laundering & hiding cigarettes in juice cartons. Eventually, the shop shut itself down. Why did it take so long? And how do we stop shops like this?
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Exclusive: London Councils need powers to shut dodgy businesses after two strikes in a single year, ministers told in new @BritishProgress report
Burnham has made reviving the high street a key message of his early months in office
mylondon.news/news/zone-1-ne…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
Come and work with us!
We're looking for an ambitious & creative editor to oversee our publications and Substack. You'll have a lot of autonomy, room to grow and excellent colleagues!
Check it out! ⬇️
🚨 We're hiring! 🚨
We are looking for an *Editor* to help build our Substack, create new content for different forms of media, and manage our research publications.
📍 London, 4 days in office
⏰ Full-time, permanent
💰 £55,000-£80,000 subject to skillset and experience
This could be a good fit for someone who has experience in public-facing writing & editing, journalism, policy or comms.
For full details and how to apply, see here: britishprogress.org/opportun…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
This is an extremely exciting role imo. We are being very ambitious about our content strategy - you could be the person to lead this work!
🚨 We're hiring! 🚨
We are looking for an *Editor* to help build our Substack, create new content for different forms of media, and manage our research publications.
📍 London, 4 days in office
⏰ Full-time, permanent
💰 £55,000-£80,000 subject to skillset and experience
This could be a good fit for someone who has experience in public-facing writing & editing, journalism, policy or comms.
For full details and how to apply, see here: britishprogress.org/opportun…
Centre for British Progress retweeted
It's possible our service-dominated economy ends up being a blessing rather than a curse.
Automation will hit manufacturing too - the longer term question (maybe not that long term though!) is where economic benefits accrue to once AI very efficiently does most of the tasks humans used to do. It's easier to imagine human labour expanding into new or better services (especially where creativity and interpersonal skills are required), than into some form of advanced manufacturing that robots can't handle.
BUT to transition well, we have to learn to adopt AI and add human value on top of it. If British workers continue with business-as-usual, doing tasks which AI systems can increasingly do themselves, that's when we'll see jobs disappearing (and the value flowing abroad to whichever countries are adopting faster).
Being the most exposed country in the world to AI is not *necessarily* a bad thing. It also means you could see the biggest productivity uplift from adoption. But to capture those benefits, you need to act fast.
In a new report for @BritishProgress, @jujulemons, @martha_dacombe and @ed_lawrence_ find that Britain is poorly positioned on several metrics: grid connections, labour market inflexibility, energy prices, sector regulations and our tax base.
They outline several "dominant strategies" to address these challenges. Read the full piece here: britishprogress.org/reports/…
🚨 We're hiring! 🚨
We are looking for an *Editor* to help build our Substack, create new content for different forms of media, and manage our research publications.
📍 London, 4 days in office
⏰ Full-time, permanent
💰 £55,000-£80,000 subject to skillset and experience
This could be a good fit for someone who has experience in public-facing writing & editing, journalism, policy or comms.
For full details and how to apply, see here: britishprogress.org/opportun…