Reclaiming the future: The UK’s chance to catch up

Japan, Korea, The Netherlands and Spain think about the long term in very different ways to us, says Philip Bray

Folded into the seat on a plane back from Seoul, or under the Channel on a train home from The Hague, or blearily waiting for a delayed Piccadilly Line train after an intense few days in Madrid, I kept coming back to the same two thoughts. First, how lucky I was – to go to these places, speaking to politicians, officials, academics and businesspeople whose work I had only read about. And second, a slightly more uncomfortable realisation: other democracies are simply better than we are in the UK at thinking about the long term.

This shouldn’t have surprised me. Over the last year, I’ve been working with Lucy Smith, 2024–25 Heywood Fellow, not on whether we should take a more long-term, more strategic approach – almost everyone we spoke to agreed on that – but how to do it. I was perhaps surprised because we still like to describe the UK as “world-beating” and because so many people at home told us long-term national strategy was fundamentally incompatible with a parliamentary democracy like ours. 

Our visits to these vibrant, contested, polarised and messy democracies showed something different. They revealed countries that had built quiet routines, cultures and habits that make strategic coherence normal, and an outward-looking, long-term perspective feel entirely natural. Far from impossible for democracies, a practice of national strategy is helping these countries forge ahead and navigate the future.

It left me with one unavoidable conclusion: we have some catching-up to do.

Spain – thinking outwards

The Spanish Government’s Office for Foresight and Strategy was like a startup within the genteel presidential enclave of the Moncloa – filled with young people, strong coffee, big lettering on the wall and potted plants everywhere. And so it was with their flagship initiative. Spain’s España 2050 provides a powerful example of how to strategise about the long-term in a country that doesn’t have an embedded tradition of strategy. It’s all the more interesting for that reason: the creation of España 2050 was a highly-intentional act of practice-building, focused on creating a national conversation structured around evidence, foresight and comparative analysis. 

Rather than relying on organic or informal strategic instincts, Spain chose to make this a formal, structured, rigorous, open exercise of looking decades ahead; and to look outwards, defining and motivating itself through competition. España 2050 tells a good story – of tremendous progress since the 1970s, shedding its ‘poor man of Europe’ image; and setting its sights high, asking what it would have to do to catch up with the EU’s most advanced economies over the next 30 years.

This wasn’t just the initial framing: it structured the entire approach. Analysis of the challenges faced were comparative ones, identifying school attendance, for instance, as a particular problem in a country at the bottom of every European league table. The solutions it proposed were comparative ones, advocating a New Zealand-style ‘wellbeing budget’ for example. And the objectives it set were comparative too – based on metrics that could be compared across the EU and intentionally set to catch up with the eight most advanced European economies. 

From this outwards-looking mentality, the Spanish government built up two normative scenarios: one that followed path dependency and another that assumed the changes required to catch-up were taken. They ‘backcasted’ what that would mean, not just in 2050, but what choices and big bets would have to be taken immediately, what staging would be needed and what intermediate milestones Spain should meet on the way. 

This comparative ambition, anchored in quality data and openly communicated as a narrative, can powerfully organise domestic debate without pretending that there is a single, set path that must be followed into the future. Maybe we need a bit more of that start-up culture in our thinking.

South Korea — thinking together

In the swanky café of the National Assembly overlooking the Han River, we were offered iced coffees – a Korean staple. Here, we spoke to two remarkable women who advise parliamentarians on long-term trends shaping this East Asian powerhouse. Had we been looking at the same view just after the Korean War, we’d have seen little more than a sandbar, turned into Seoul’s flood-prone airport, serving a city of 1.3 million. Today, Yeouido – a prominent district in Seoul – sits within a glass-and-steel metropolis of 26 million, half the country’s population.

South Korea’s broader rise is extraordinary: from a GNI per capita of $67 in 1953 – poorer than the North – to around $37,000 today, among the world’s richest. Critics often note that early growth came under an authoritarian regime, but what is striking is how much of Korea’s transformation happened after democratisation. In one of the world’s most vibrant and contested democracies, long-term strategy has endured and evolved.

Successive governments of all political colours kept roughly the same drumbeat: a single coherent economic vision updated in phases every five or so years – from basic industries to heavy and chemical ones, then cars, consumer electronics and now high technology and semiconductors. Politics shaped the ‘how’, but the underlying consensus remained: build a mercantilist, export-driven economy based around the chaebols (large industrial conglomerates); attract foreign investment; position Korea as a centre of human capital; and protect domestic firms long enough for them to scale.

One interviewee summed this up with a striking metaphor: Korea as a “flotilla”. National strategy was never simply a government project. The state, the chaebols and other firms, the creative industries and citizens moved in synchrony – different vessels, different roles, but broadly rowing in the same direction because it made collective and individual sense. Korea’s economic transformation was a national endeavour, powered as much by societal commitment and private-sector boldness as by government programmes. 

This coherence is possible because Korea has an unusually shared self-understanding. When we asked people to describe the country’s strengths and weaknesses, the answers were almost identical. They described a resource-poor, geographically constrained nation, but one rich in human capital – high educational attainment, technical intensity and cultural confidence. The chaebols were seen as engine and brake, commanding the capital and export reach that drives national success, while also crowding out start-ups and newer innovators. Koreans were equally universally clear about their biggest challenge: a looming demography crisis. This widely shared diagnosis – reinforced by the researchers we were meeting, whose independent institute provides the National Assembly with long-range analysis and evidence about the country’s trajectory – gives a stable, common starting place for strategic choice. 

Korea’s cultural surge tells the same story. Despite a deep cultural tradition, its modern output was once overshadowed by Chinese, American and especially Japanese content. Today, Squid Game remains Netflix’s most-watched series ever, and K-Culture generated $13.2 billion in export revenues in 2022. This did not happen by chance. Government created an export agency and invested in infrastructure, strengthened IP protection – but industry leaders consistently told us the state was “playing catch-up”. The real strategic engine was the creative sectors themselves: producers, writers, studios and artists who developed globally resonant formats and a highly melodic, choreo-driven pop genre. 

Korea’s economic and cultural strategies have remained so effective over decades – through democratisation, political upheaval and the rapid development that saw the skyscrapers of Yeouido grow and grow because they were never narrowly governmental. They were national: built on a shared view of strengths and vulnerabilities, and using different actors – different capacities of the Korean nation – playing specialised but aligned roles. When long-term strategy is held in this way, not as a government plan but as a national practice, it becomes both durable and powerful.

The Netherlands – thinking forwards

A well-lit meeting room in an elegant art deco office in The Hague, being offered buttermilk, felt perhaps an unlikely place to look for creative statecraft. Yet since the 1950s, the Dutch have used scenarios to look ahead, beginning with the work of their first planbureau – independent state research institutions, loosely comparable to the UK’s OBR. And here we were in one of them, listening to some of the most enthusiastic public servants I’ve met describe, with real pride, the Dutch routine of looking 10-20 years ahead through scenarios.

Crucially, Dutch scenarios are well-understood, not as predictions, but as “visions of the future that can inform debate on consistent long-term policy choices.”

Their distinctive power comes from their openness. Dutch scenarios are intentionally public. They are published widely, often just before election manifestos, giving society agreed temporal anchors, common ways of thinking about the decades ahead and an entry point into a mature national conversation about today’s choices and their long-term consequences.

They are not government planning tools; they are tools for society. When we got curious and started Googling their 2040 scenarios, we uncovered a whole ecosystem of 2040 strategies – from banks and cities to sectors and ministries. The scenarios provide a common frame around which to plan. They shape debate and inform investment decisions without dictating a single future. The independence of the planbureaus matters here: governments cannot reframe scenarios to suit their policies, and the bureaus themselves feel obliged to think across the political spectrum. Some are now even experimenting with citizens leading scenario design.

The Netherlands is also at the forefront of operationalising strategies looking 10, 20, even 50 years ahead. As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, it treats space – land and seabed – as a strategic resource on a par with money. Housing, economic connectivity, nature recovery, and flood defence all depend on long-term decisions about land use. Maps become the organising tool to surface those trade-offs. Even defining national characteristics, such as the Dutch affinity for cycling, emerge from this shared understanding of how land should be used and protected.

Futures thinking is not alien to the UK – other countries once visited Britain to learn from how we did things. But we have forgotten how central these tools must be to statecraft. Unlike the Dutch, we have not tapped the power of making such analysis public and independent in enabling evidence-based conversations, or giving society common, long-term reference points. Looking out over the parks of The Hague in that art deco meeting room, I found myself thinking about the upcoming Dutch elections – and how, even in such a divisive political environment, futures work can create shared horizons and help anchor national debate beyond the next election cycle.

Japan – thinking boldly

A brutalist office this time, overlooking the domed, skeletal shell that survived Hiroshima’s atomic bomb. A city defined by history. And yet, the prefecture officials we were talking to spoke with remarkable clarity about the future, not because it is any more predictable in Japan, but because there is far greater confidence in how to navigate it.

We heard repeatedly in Japan about a deep sense of loss of its global high-tech manufacturing dominance. In the 1980s, Japan produced nearly half of the world’s semiconductors; today it is a bit player, outpaced by Taiwan, South Korea and especially China, which manufactures a quarter of all 200mm+ wafers. This isn’t just about national pride. For Japan, sovereign capability in this critical technology is now seen as essential to economic resilience and national security, particularly as China’s dominance continues to grow.

Japan’s response has been characteristically bold. It is not afraid of long-term big bets, and the centrepiece of its semiconductor push is Rapidus, a new joint venture between the Japanese Government and eight major firms such as Toyota and Sony. This is no comms exercise. Around $11bn of public funding has been committed, with the eight firms committing millions each themselves. This growing investment has enabled Rapidus to become only the fourth company worldwide to acquire multiple extreme ultraviolet lithography machines – at $200 million each, among the most complex and capital-intensive tools in the world and beyond even the capability of most large firms. It is also a place-based bet: the new fabrication plant is being built on Hokkaido, a relatively poor, rural region with access to the vast renewable power a leading-edge facility will need. 

Crucially, this is not a hedged bet. The government has been explicit that profitability or tax revenues are not the aim. Success is defined only in national terms: restoring sovereign capability and long-term economic security in a foundational technology. What distinguishes Japan’s approach from other countries’ attempts to enter the semiconductor race is its cultural attitude towards long-term strategy. We heard repeatedly that agreement in Japanese politics often takes years – because once a commitment is made, it must be delivered. Targets are not aspirational; they are obligations. The credibility of government depends on meeting them.

This continuity of purpose is systemically reinforced by institutional culture. Japanese civil servants often spend their entire careers working in one ministry, developing deep personal knowledge and links to particular national champion businesses, creating impressive departmental memory and stability. When Japan makes a big bet, the whole system – funding, bureaucracy, politics and industry – re-orients to make it stick.

This gives Japan a degree of strategic certainty that many democracies would envy and an ability to pursue decades-long commitments – whether re-establishing a semiconductor industry or ensuring Hiroshima’s past is never repeated – with such steadiness. This blend of cultural and institutional alignment offers Japan an uncommon assurance as it faces the uncertainties of the future. 

Concluding thoughts

Democracies around the world, then, are already practising long-term national strategy. They are variously outward-looking, self-aware, nationally-focussed, committed over decades and willing to discuss hard choices openly. Their strategies are not 800-page tomes or grand designs, but repeated routines – a practice.

The UK is no stranger to bold bets, reinforced institutionally and culturally. From the creation of the NHS, to an independent nuclear deterrent, to the Special Relationship; we have made strategic choices that have endured for generations and still endure now. But we do not yet have a deliberate way of identifying the next set of long-term bets, or of assessing our national strengths and vulnerabilities in comparison to our competitors. We have no regular, confident rhythm of public futures thinking. And we lack structured ways of talking openly about trade-offs and prioritisation at a national level. Above all, we need a practice that is not for government but for the nation. 

Much of this capability already exists in fragments. The Government Office for Science looks decades ahead at global trends. The Civil Service remains world-class at using data to inform policy. But these capabilities often sit apart – foresight too rarely linked with decision-making; evidence too often provided only to ministers, leaving our public debate open to vague promises and commitments to deliver everything, everywhere, all at once.

It would be easy to end by asking, ‘Which of these models should we copy?’ But the more important question is, ‘What kind of long-term strategic practice should the UK build, given our own institutions, geography and democratic culture?’ 

That question lies at the heart of our newly published National Strategy Playbook – a first cut at 25 practical steps the UK could take to establish a repeatable strategic routine. And for those who want to go deeper, our detailed paper The Practice of National Strategy: Concepts, Global Lessons and Their Application sets out the full global analysis – from the Dutch scenarios to how the Fins use their Parliament to inform future-focused debate to the lessons Cold War US strategic methods could teach us.

Taken together, these resources begin to sketch what a British practice of national strategy could look like: outward-looking, collectively owned, institutionally grounded and capable of renewal. Other democracies are already doing this. We can too – and if we want to navigate an increasingly uncertain world with confidence, we must.