The Oxford - Cambridge Growth Corridor is one of the UK’s biggest opportunities.

But it’s in danger of failing - because of transport.

It’s a fiendishly complex puzzle but with a huge opportunity to be realised.

This post is about why transport is at the heart of the challenge - and a cry for Government leadership.

Why, without Andy Burnham, did Labour seem doomed? How can a party with 403 MPs not have a single person deemed capable of becoming Prime Minister.

I would argue that this is a flaw in institutional decision-making. It’s about how MPs are chosen, and it definitely affects both main parties.

It’s also a golden opportunity for Andy Burnham to make a difference.

The public transport industry takes young people for granted.

That’s dangerous and needs to stop.

Here’s how.

The trains are being painted but it’s not yet clear what the brand is meant to mean.

Brand strategy is not an afterthought - it’s a fundamental driver of customer experience. It should be one of the first and most important decisions.

And - this is crucial - brand strategy is not the same as org structure.

A letter to the next Prime Minister about how he can use devolution to both serve the country and his own political ends.

Power to the people!

I had time to think about what the key tasks of leadership are when my startup was suddenly annihilated by the pandemic.

Having realised, I can see that Sir Keir Starmer just doesn’t have those particular skills.

London bankrolls the rest of the UK but its productivity is falling. It needs a new way of thinking about its own economy if it is to maintain its global competitiveness. Both London and the wider UK depend on getting this right.

We’ve rebuilt roundabouts, crashed the economy and supported potentially harmful technologies - all through unquestioning faith in flawed numbers.

Meanwhile, non-numerical evidence is no longer seen as legitimate.

Better decision-making requires us to question numbers more and value all sources of evidence equally.

The next Prime Minister is going to be appointed because of a consensus that the wheels of Government move too slowly.

But how to get them spinning faster?

Here’s part two of my Baker’s dozen of ideas for getting Government going again.

We’re about to have a new Prime Minister. That now seems highly likely.

And the reason couldn’t be clearer: there’s a consensus, across the board, that Keir Starmer has moved too slowly on too many things.

So what needs to change under his successor?

Well, a big part of it is the way Government works.

Here’s a Baker’s dozen of ideas…

The DfT funded Mini Switzerland without a published funding pot or transparent criteria.

Good!

Being able to react to an idea with pace and agility is exactly what we need from Government in an era when the public doubt the state’s ability to deliver.

Too much procedural fairness can stifle outcomes - without actually being fairer.

Omer Bor wrote a reply to one of my blog posts. In my reply to him, I argue that visions should be set and owned by local communities, with appraisers there to judge whether the vision is being met - not to control what the vision should be.

I also continue to prosecute my case that 20th century transport planning failed.

It’s superb that Mini Switzerland has been funded, but we don’t want just one.

Other places will have different needs and Mini Switzerland will generate more learnings if it’s in more places.

So where’s next and what does it need?

Here’s my Mini Switzerland handbook.

Lots of people have asked me to share my thoughts on Better Connected, the Government’s new Integrated National Transport Strategy.

So here they are…

The summary: great that it exists at all, good as a first step but there’s much more needed to create a strategy that will actually integrate transport.

If you didn’t fancy spending your Friday in a windowless conference room in Canary Wharf, here are my notes from the UK Rail Summit.

Spoiler alert: it was encouraging.

Mini Switzerland succeeded because it was created by a multi-disciplinary team with leadership, empowerment and purpose. We can do this more often!

𝘈 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘹 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘢 𝘗𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙊𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝘿𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.

Holly is a hard-nailed transport policy officer.

She’s lived through tough times. With her sidekick Glen, she’s out to discover which interventions result in which outcomes.

Over the years, dozens of innocent interventions have been convicted of crimes they did not commit. That modal filter: convicted by model of increasing traffic on the main road. That tramway extension: convicted by model of offering a low BCR and banged up for life.

Can Holly prevent more innocent transport schemes being convicted for crimes they did not commit?

We argue about rural transport integration but none of us really know what the effects will be, as we tend to prefer modelling to experimentation.

My Mini Switzerland project is about trying to find out on the ground what actually happens.

Swiss transport integration is incredible but is it affordable? In this blog post, I argue that it’s more affordable than most people think - because of the powers of network effects

HR teams have a golden opportunity to help organisations develop the cultures needed for the modern world.

It means unlearning a lot of the current norms - and developing new ones.

They need to become the champions of empowerment, flexibility and lifelong career development.