The Economist 29Feb2020

46 TheEconomistFebruary 29th 2020

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ince he became prime minister, Boris

Johnson’s speeches have been studded

with references to the glory of British sci-

ence. Sometimes they are to cutting-edge

facilities (“a place in Oxfordshire that could

soon be the hottest place in the solar sys-

tem”), sometimes to those who work in

them (Britain will become a “supercharged

magnet to attract scientists like iron fil-

ings”) and sometimes to the “colossal” in-

vestment his government will deliver. The

last, at least, is not Johnsonian hyperbole:

during the general election, the prime min-

ister promised to more than double annual

spending on research and development

(r&d) to £18bn ($23bn, or roughly 0.7% of

gdp) by 2024-25—a figure that may rise fur-

ther still in the forthcoming budget.

The decision to splurge on research is

part of the government’s attempt to answer

the central question it faces: What next?

Downing Street believes that for Britain to

be successful outside the European Union

it will have to build on its assets, not least

its excellent science and research. On the

basis of the citation impact calculated by

Scopus, researchers in Britain are the most

influential in the world. Despite account-

ing for just 7% of global publications, they

produce more than 14% of the most highly-

cited work. The government has loosened

visa rules for foreign researchers and plans

to cut the red tape they face. As Dominic

Cummings, the prime minister’s chief ad-

viser, has put it, the aim is to make “Britain

the best place in the world to be for those

who can invent the future.”

To make this happen, the government

could just do what it is doing now but on a

grander scale. ukResearch and Innovation

(ukri) gives most of the government’s

money to the best universities and people.

The highest-ranked research receives four

times as much cash as the next best under

the main funding stream. This makes the

system particularly susceptible to the

“Matthew Effect”, meaning the best re-

search attracts more funding, becoming

better still, thus attracting more funding,

and so on. Nearly half of public r&dmoney

ends up in the “Golden Triangle”, as Oxford,

Cambridge and London’s best universities

are commonly known. As a result, Britain

has three universities in the Times Higher

Educationglobal top ten, a league table de-

termined largely by research quality. That

is more than twice as many, per person, as

America has.

And yet research excellence is not the

government’s only aim. As he announced

the extra money, Mr Johnson promised it

would unleash a “new wave of economic

growth” and “level up” industry in the re-

gions. The goal, as a Tory mpputs it, is not

to “to tip a load of money into telescopes to

explore the outer regions of space, which

will do fuck all for our economy”. Instead, it

is to increase Britain’s dismal productivity

growth, particularly in the regions, thus

delivering jobs and higher wages.

Until relatively recently, British policy-

makers believed it was better left to the

private sector to turn academic ideas into

marketable products. Government spend-

The future of research

The £18bn question

The government has promised to double research funding in four years. How

should it spend the dosh?

Britain

47 Eurovisiondesperation

48 Bagehot: Keir Starmer

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Read more from this week’s Britain section:

Economist.com/Britain