What if the residents of a street could collectively decide to build more homes on it - and share directly in the benefits? That's street votes. In our new paper with @LabourTogether we set out how community-led street votes could help @SteveReedMP build 1.5 million new homes. labourtogether.uk/all-report… Street votes let neighbours come together, work with an architect, agree a new plan for their street, and vote. If they say yes, building happens with their consent, on their terms, with benefits flowing to the people who already live there. Building in towns and cities is vital - it adds much-needed homes where people want to live, it’s more sustainable and it grows a more resilient local economy. But building in cities and towns is difficult. Under street votes, instead of builders, councils, and residents fighting each other, the community can push for more homes themselves. And because ordinary people are driving the change on small sites, new homes can be built faster than the big schemes relying on big developers. Street votes learn from international schemes that have delivered tens of thousands of homes a year in cities like Seoul and Tel Aviv. Applied here, the evidence suggests up to 30,000 new homes a year in the places we need them most - with the first homes delivered before the end of this Parliament. Much of the work has already been done to put communities in the driver’s seat with street votes. MHCLG just needs to implement the rules. In this paper, @1jamesHowat, @KaneEmerson & @dc_lawrence set out the final steps that the Government should take to build thousands of new homes with popular support.

I’ve recently been worried about brain drain for a very selfish reason. A lot of my friends have been leaving (you know who you are). I couldn’t tell if my concern was bad reasoning from anecdotes so I tracked one group of exceptional Britons you can actually follow individually: International Mathematical Olympiad medallists. These are not normal teenagers. ~3% of IMO winners go on to win major scientific prizes (60x the rate of MIT alumni). The UK's medallists include two Fields Medallists, the designer of the chip in 99% of the world's smartphones, and the inventors of public-key cryptography. The headline number says I am wrong to worry: 71% retention and the UK is the second-largest importer of IMO talent globally after the US. But look closer and you see: 1. The most recent settled-career cohort shows the lowest retention on record. 2. Before 2016, not a single UK medallist did their undergrad abroad. Since then, two have. Both went to MIT. 3. Of British medallists in industry, only 33% work for a British firm. The modal employer is Anthropic, OpenAI, or Jane Street. 4. Leaving is individually rational. IMO alumni who moved to the US were up to 6x more productive than equally talented peers who stayed home. The UK multiplier is 2-3x. The individual-optimal and nationally-optimal choice are not the same thing. So was I right to worry? Too early to say. The data is consistent with both a structural shift and noise. But the laments of brain drain are not obviously wrong. Full piece: substack.com/@britishprogres… (A note on statistical validity: we send six kids to the IMO a year, so some of these figures rest on analysing small numbers. This is enough to see the shape of things but not enough to lean hard on any percentage.)

Left and right agree that stamp duty needs reform...but, buyer beware... My @theipaper analysis of the Housing, Communities and Local Government select committee's timely call for change via chair @FloEshalomi featuring market expert Neal Hudson and @BritishProgress inews.co.uk/news/scrapping-s…

🚨NEW REPORT🚨 from @watt_direction @BritishProgress on how to get down electricity costs to help decarbonisation. We need a quid pro quo: move levies onto general taxation now, in return for fundamental reforms to stop us wasting money on expensive generation. Read all about it 👇

What’s the biggest barrier to decarbonising Britain? We think it’s expensive electricity. @BritishProgress have 4 policy ideas to cut household bills by £115, and save businesses 7%. But bill reductions must come alongside market reform - to ensure long term value for money.

Personal news! 🚀 Delighted to be joining @BritishProgress today as the Programme Manager for Technology and State Capacity.

Great opportunity to help get the UK growing again!

🚨 We are hiring! 🚨 Could you be our next head of operations? 👀 We are looking for an exceptionally high-agency, adaptable and organised individual, who is excited about our mission to create UK growth & progress, to run operations for our growing team. Full time, £70-90k, London. Full details & how to apply here: britishprogress.org/opportun…

Could wealth taxes be heading our way? This week Wes Streeting called for equalising capital gains & income tax, and Andy Burnham hinted at a tax on land. The UK's tax system is unfair and inefficient. We reward those who earn money by doing nothing, and punish those who work. But do wealth taxes actually work? In my latest piece for @ArguablyMag, I look at the two strongest candidates for reform: ⚖️ Equalising capital gains tax with income tax 🏡 Reforming property taxation, such as by replacing SDLT with an annual property tax I argue that one of these is far better for growth than the other: while a property tax encourages investment in more productive assets, and the development of land, taxing capital gains can do the opposite, reducing the return on productive investment and encouraging capital flight. Read the full piece here: arguably.uk/p/could-a-wealth… Thanks to @pdmsero for helping with much of the analysis!

On the one hand there are all the layoffs -- on the other hand, everybody's always looking for a good head of operations (which these days also includes vibe coding) the position of GOLD, the irreplaceable, the life-changing, always very very needed -- just a thought:

Great role👇

An organisation is only as effective as its operations team, and that's why we're looking for an exceptional individual to lead our ops at @BritishProgress. If you might be that person, get in touch! Or if you know someone else who could be, please share with them.

the most ambitious thing you can work on today is rebuilding the country maybe that’s at a company, like building our TSMC but maybe it’s at @britishprogress, who are leading a new generation of high-leverage non-profits raising our national policy ambition strongly recommend applying:

We’ve grown enormously over the past year, and now we’re looking for someone exceptional to help us take the next leap. It’s a special role on a special team. Please share with brilliant people - and consider applying yourself!

Come and work with an incredible team!

This is fantastic to see from the Chancellor. Rather than strengthening democracy, judicial review has become a blocker: preventing elected governments from delivering public services & national infrastructure. Delighted that Reeves is tackling JR reform head on, and drawing on @BritishProgress's work on this.

Britain has made amazing progress in decarbonising its electricity supply - It's a country that should be using more power! ⚡️ And more consumption is needed if we are to soften the impact of rising network costs...

We can either build data centres in Britain or elsewhere in the world. But it's clear that a British data centre is better for the world's climate than an American data centre.

This was a fascinating piece to work on. This chart tells you all you need to know about why saying YES to data centres in the UK is vital.