048. Katie Lam: Everything has to change for anything to stay the same
From Anglofuturism by Tom Ough and Calum Drysdale
March 22, 2026 · 1h 2m
About this episode
Katie Lam discusses the inefficiencies of the British state and the challenges of governance with hosts Tom Ough and Calum Drysdale.
Katie Lam came to Westminster via Goldman Sachs, Number 10, the AI company Faculty, and the Home Office. She has seen the British state from the outside and the inside and her verdict is the same both times: it is less than the sum of its parts. Bright people, right intentions, and at the end of another week, no progress on where things stood at the end of last week. The problem is not obstructive civil servants — those are rarer than the cliche suggests. The problem is a machine with many people who can say no, almost nobody who can say yes, and every single one of them incentivised to avoid risk. The cumulative effect is a state that tries to do everything and achieves almost nothing. Tom, Calum, and Katie discuss: * The state as a ratchet that never goes back: Every crisis creates a new team, a new association, a new point person. Brexit, COVID, each one added barnacles that never get scraped off. The wedding venue association. The ten-person team on banking access equality, set up by a coalition minister, still running. “Any department at any one time will have so many top priorities.” Keir Starmer has twenty-five number one priorities. If everything is the top priority…
People in this episode
Hosts: Tom Ough, Calum Drysdale
Guest: Katie Lam
Topics covered
- British state
- government inefficiency
- risk aversion
- state size
- political priorities
- civil service
Keywords
- British state
- government
- inefficiency
- civil servants
- politics
- risk
- Brexit
- COVID
- priorities
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Goldman Sachs, Number 10, AI company Faculty, Home Office
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