Welcome to our fortnightly Three Big Ideas roundup, in which we serve up a curated selection of ideas (and our takes on them) in entrepreneurship, innovation, science and technology, handpicked by the team.
📈 Eamonn Ives, Research Director
One of our guiding beliefs here at The Entrepreneurs Network is that economic growth is something worth celebrating. In recent years, thanks in no small part to the widening reach of the progress studies movement, appreciation for the importance of economic growth has noticeably increased. The Prime Minister himself regularly preaches the gospel of why expanding the size of the economy matters. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought there weren’t still swathes of indifference among society to economic growth, not to mention stubborn pockets of resistance.
It’s not hard to see why we’re in the minority. Most of us ‘engage’ with economic growth by occasionally hearing about what’s happened to Gross Domestic Product in a given month – has it gone up by a tenth of a single percentage point, or down? Measly marginal updates one way or the other scarcely make for compelling news. As such, it’s understandable why many people place greater priority on other goals in their lives.
Moreover, it’s not as if GDP is a perfect measure. Famously, if I cleaned my apartment myself, Britain’s GDP figure wouldn’t budge an inch – but it would if I paid a professional to. Nor does GDP do a good job of encompassing things like the environment either. If I chop down a forest and sell the timber one year, economic growth on paper might rocket upward – even if we all know that rate won’t be sustained the following year.
Having said all this, GDP persists as one of the most important indicators we have. Why? In a recent article, Brian Albrecht eloquently explains that despite its fallibility, GDP is nonetheless a robust proxy for much of what we hold dear in life. Higher GDP per capita, he notes, correlates with longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher educational attainment, reduced extreme poverty, and higher self-reported happiness.
When telling the story of economic growth, perhaps it’s incumbent on us to focus more on these outcomes rather than simply reeling off cold dry numbers on a spreadsheet.
🪞 Mann Virdee, Senior Researcher
Christmas is for many a natural time of reflection. As we come to the end of 2025, what can we tell future historians looking back about what life was like at this moment in time in the UK?
There are times when it’s hard not to get carried away by the negativity about Britain’s potential for prosperity. We learnt yesterday that unemployment has risen to a four-year high of 5.1%, and it’s hitting the youngest hardest. I think the weakening labour market is a sign that things might get a lot worse before they get better.
The disruption from AI is also increasingly visible. AI is making it harder for employers to identify strong candidates, and it is also being used to perform tasks new graduates would previously have done in the earliest stages of their career in a fraction of the time and to a higher standard. What does that mean for the prospects of young people and social dislocation? I think we’re about to find out.
But there are developments that suggest, even if faintly, that a burgeoning pro-growth consensus is finally taking hold.
Yesterday, the Housing Minister announced reforms to deliver more homes. That includes the addition of a default ‘yes’ for housing developments around train stations, which may be a key to unlocking productivity growth. Recently, the Prime Minister has committed to implementing all the excellent recommendations from the Nuclear Taskforce, which should help lower energy costs in the long term. The Home Secretary has said the best and brightest talent will be fast-tracked to help Britain regain lost ground in the global race for talent.
These are reasons to be optimistic. We’re starting to see, admittedly more in rhetoric than reality at the moment, that this Government is serious about unblocking the arteries of the economy – in planning, energy and the labour market.
If 2025 was the year the problem was diagnosed, let’s hope it’s also remembered as the year we started to address it too.
🛑 James Graham, Senior Researcher, Prosperity Institute
Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations have exploded in scope in recent years, degrading our financial landscape.
Prior to 2002, responsibility for financial crime sat with the police. This changed with the passage of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which represented a legal and philosophical shift. Banks and private businesses became responsible not only for providing financial services to their customers, but also for ensuring they were not criminals.
Since 2002, the burden placed upon banks has only expanded, with the most significant update being the Information on the Payer regulations in 2017. Neither the 2002 legislation nor subsequent regulations were at the behest of the British Parliament. Rather, they were required for us to abide by European Union directives.
In British common law, every individual is considered innocent until proven guilty, and their right to privacy is nearly absolute. The AML and KYC regime has turned this on its head. People are now treated with suspicion and presumed guilty – not just those in high finance, but ordinary people doing things such as purchasing a home. To prove their innocence and access basic financial services, customers must hand over vast amounts of private information to prove they are who they say they are.
This is not only wrong in principle, it has not been proven effective at preventing crime and it creates barriers for entrepreneurs who have to wait weeks rather than hours for new bank accounts, who pay higher fees to cover the £34 billion a year which banks must spend on complying with regulations, and who quite likely find themselves amongst the hundreds of thousands of accounts debanked every year. If that is you, please do let us know by completing our survey, which seeks to build and amplify a coalition of the debanked.
It is time to seriously rethink our financial crime architecture. The state should not require the private sector to enforce flawed regulations that stifle enterprise and undermine the British common law tradition.
Thanks for this, informative