How do we turbo-charge Britain’s economy?
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner have been championing growth this week. But will their plans actually work?
Amol has assembled an expert panel to provide their take on how to generate more wealth in the UK – Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson and venture capitalist and co-founder of Lovecrafts, Cherry Freeman.
And comedian Frank Skinner joins Amol with his moment of the week – watch out for a bonus episode with much more of their chat coming to this feed soon.
If you have a question you’d like to Amol and Nick to answer, get in touch by sending us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 or email us Today@bbc.co.uk
Episodes of The Today Podcast land first on BBC Sounds. Get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories of the week, with insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme.
The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson, both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the UK’s most influential radio news programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
You can listen to the latest episode of The Today Podcast any time on your smart speaker by saying “Smart Speaker, ask BBC Sounds to play The Today Podcast.”
The senior producer is Tom Smithard, the producer is Hatty Nash, research and digital production from Joe Wilkinson. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths. Technical production from Mike Regaard.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We get it. Life is busy. You want to keep up with the news, but there's just too much going on. |
| 0:06.9 | Which is where Newscast comes in. We do the work, and when you're ready to dig deeper into the day's news, you just pop us into your ears. |
| 0:14.8 | It does mean we have to put in the hard work, though. |
| 0:17.5 | Listen to Newscast every day on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:21.5 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:25.3 | Growth. |
| 0:25.9 | That is what everyone wants. |
| 0:27.3 | Growth in the morning, growth in the evening, growth in the afternoon. |
| 0:30.3 | But how do you actually get an economy to grow? |
| 0:34.7 | Well, if running an economy was as simple as pulling a few levers and seeing the |
| 0:39.6 | results, someone might have pulled those levers a while ago. And growth is probably harder to |
| 0:44.6 | achieve when you've got the overhang of a financial crisis, a pandemic, a energy crisis, |
| 0:50.9 | an ageing population, and yes, political volatility of the kind that we have had in |
| 0:55.7 | Britain. But, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rainer have been championing |
| 1:01.2 | growth this week. Our question today is, will it actually work? What do economists and people in |
| 1:07.6 | business, investors, entrepreneurs think we should do to generate more wealth in this country. |
| 1:15.3 | We've assembled an expert panel to tell us, and also, though he's an expert in many, many things, |
| 1:20.3 | I don't know if he'd say he's an expert in macroeconomics, but he's utterly, utterly captivating. |
| 1:25.0 | We've got Frank Skinner, the Frank Skinner, joining us for a bit of |
| 1:28.5 | light relief and a bit of wisdom too. All right. How, Nick, very sadly this week. He's off on his well-earned holidays. But we do have the man, the voice, on everyone's lips and radio. |
| 1:58.2 | Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said yesterday... |
| 2:02.8 | Paul Johnson from the IFS writing the Times this morning, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

