Hi, everyone, and welcome to this latest instalment of our Brexit and Beyond podcast.

And I'm delighted today to welcome Duncan Weldon, a writer, former political advisor, economist and loads of other things.

He also, I notice, has a substack. Duncan, I don't know what that means, but congratulations and welcome.

Thank you very much. And substack, you know, he's an email newsletter service. I've launched one

called Value Added. It's about macroeconomics, political economy, you know, the kind of things listeners

to your podcast are interested in. There we go. That's the hard sell. But actually, above and beyond all

of that, what I really want to talk to you about is, of course, you've got a new book out which

deals with the rather sort of grand issue of 200 plus years of British economic policy.

So firstly, I want to say congratulations because

it's a really, really good read. And I've never said back to any columnist before. Secondly,

it's full of just amazing sort of pithy bits of wisdom. And one of them is you say that in the

short term, politicians overstate their influence. And in the long term, they underestimate it,

which seems like a really

interesting idea, but can you expand on it for us? Yeah, of course. So I think policymakers in general,

politicians in particular tend to like to think of themselves as being at the centre of attention

in terms of shaping their own destiny. But I think actually when you look at the long run of

British economic history,

then, you know, there's only so much you can do in any one budget or even one or two budgets

or legislative programs. You know, politicians tend to overestimate what they're going to achieve

on a 12 to 24 to even 36-month view. But some of the changes politicians can make can really

have a lasting long-run

influence by shaping the path down which the economy develops. So if you look at a Fatcher,

...