Econ to Icon

Amelia Fletcher is almost certainly unique in British public life: a highly regarded competition economist who has spent decades at the centre of some of the biggest questions about how markets work, while sustaining a serious and still-active career in music. In this episode she talks to Paul Johnson and Michael Kell about both — how she ended up in economics almost by accident, what competition policy actually does and why it matters, and what it means to have kept two very different creative lives running in parallel for forty years.

As an economist, she spent twelve years as chief economist at the Office of Fair Trading, helped establish the Competition and Markets Authority's digital markets unit, served on the board of the Financial Conduct Authority, and co-authored the Furman Review — the landmark 2019 report that recommended pro-competitive regulation of the big tech platforms, and which shaped both the UK's Digital Markets Act and the EU's equivalent legislation. She is now Professor of Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia.

As a musician, she formed Talulah Gosh in her first year at Oxford, turned down a major label deal to stay at university, carried the bands Heavenly, Marine Research, Tender Trap, The Catenary Wires and Swansea Sound alongside her career as an economist, and now runs Skep Wax Records with her husband Rob Pursey. Heavenly currently has 430,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — a number Amelia notes translates to roughly £4.30 in income.

In this conversation, Paul explores the substance of her economics:

Michael explores the person behind the public role: how Amelia ended up studying economics almost by accident having taken science A-levels, why she chose consultancy over academia after her PhD, what it was like to leave a large public institution and return to university life, and what — after all of it — she is prouder of: the economics or the music.

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If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Baroness Sharon White has had one of the most varied and consequential careers in British public life. She grew up in Leyton, East London, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, attended a comprehensive school, won a place at Cambridge to study economics, and from there rose through the civil service to become the first Black person, and only the second woman, to serve as Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury. She then moved into more public roles, first as Chief Executive of Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, and then spent 4 years as Chair of the John Lewis Partnership. She is now Head for Europe at CDPQ, a major Canadian pension fund, as well as Chair of Frontier Economics.

In this conversation, Paul and Michael explore what Sharon's career reveals about economics in practice, about public leadership, and about how to navigate decisions when there is no clear map.

Paul focuses on the substance of public policy — particularly Sharon's years at the Treasury during the austerity period of the Coalition government, when she was helping to oversee decisions about where the cuts fell and why. They discuss how those decisions were made, what was understood about the consequences at the time, and how Sharon reflects on them now.

Michael explores the personal story — growing up in East London, the accident of a good school that shaped her trajectory, what gave her the confidence to step into stretching roles she wasn't obviously qualified for, and how she managed the transition from a powerful but largely anonymous civil servant to a very public leader.

Topics covered include:

Hosts: Paul Johnson (Frontier Economics / Queen's College Oxford / IFS) and Michael Kell (career coach, michaelkellcoaching.com)

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Tim Harford is one of Britain's best-known explainers of economics — presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less, author of multiple bestselling books including The Undercover Economist, and longtime columnist at the Financial Times. But as this episode makes clear, almost none of it was planned. Tim talks to Paul Johnson and Michael Kell about a career built on curiosity, accident, and a willingness to follow what genuinely interested him rather than what seemed sensible.

Tim's career in economics began with a PPE degree at Oxford, followed by a master's in economics, but then spent years in conventional institutional roles he mostly didn't enjoy: management consultancy, the Shell scenarios team, the World Bank. It was a chance conversation at Shell that prompted him to start writing what would become The Undercover Economist — and even then, the path to publication was slow and accidental, involving an FT internship, a hiring freeze, and pieces filed from Washington while technically working for the World Bank. Then in 2006, the book, the FT job and a TV series all arrived at once, after a five-year build.

In the interview, we explore how Tim thinks about the craft of economic communication: how you make difficult ideas accessible without dumbing them down, and why it matters in a world full of misleading data and confident claims. He is sharply critical of what he calls "premature enumeration" — economists who reach for data sets before they have properly understood how the world actually works. He uses the 2008 financial crisis as the example: economists modelled finance generically, without thinking like lawyers or anthropologists about the actual contracts being written and the risks being created.

We also talk about his career choices: how an honest word from a trusted mentor — who told him bluntly he was not good enough for academic economics — turned out to be one of the most valuable things anyone ever said to him. And how curiosity, rather than ambition, has been the real engine of everything he has done.

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Stephanie Flanders is one of the UK's most recognisable economics voices. She grew up in a family steeped in journalism and performance — her father was the comedian and songwriter Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann fame — and came of age politically during the high-water mark of Thatcherism, when she first realised that if you wanted to understand politics, you had to understand economics.

That instinct took her from Oxford to Harvard's Kennedy School, to the leader-writing desk of the Financial Times, to the US Treasury under Larry Summers, to eleven years as Economics Editor of the BBC, to JP Morgan and now Bloomberg, where she is Head of Economics and Government.

In this conversation, Paul and Michael explore the full arc of that career. Paul asks what it takes to explain economics well on television, how the relationship between economics and politics has shifted — and whether the financial markets are underpricing some serious long-term risks. Michael explores the personal side: what draws someone away from a prestigious and visible job at the BBC, what Stephanie learned from working inside very different kinds of institution, and what qualities she believes have underpinned her success.

Among the things Stephanie reflects on:

A wide-ranging, candid conversation about economics in practice, institutional life, and the craft of making complicated ideas both accurate and accessible.

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

Sir Steve Webb is widely regarded as one of the most effective pensions ministers Britain has ever had. In this first episode of Econ to Icon, Paul Johnson and Michael Kell sit down with the man who drove through the new state pension, helped introduce automatic enrolment, and has spent his post-political career holding the system to account from the outside. Steve is characteristically direct, self-deprecating and thoughtful throughout — on both the substance of pension policy and the more personal questions about career, identity and what it means to do work that matters.

Steve began his working life as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal, before moving into academia and then spending 18 years as a Lib Dem MP. The final five of those years were spent as Pensions Minister in the coalition government of 2010 to 2015, working alongside Iain Duncan Smith and negotiating with a sceptical Treasury to push through reforms that changed retirement income for millions of people.

In this conversation, we explore:

Links:

Watch this episode on YouTube

If this conversation got you thinking about your own career — whether you're just starting out, looking to move up, or wondering about a change of direction — Michael offers one-to-one coaching. Find out more at www.michaelkellcoaching.com.

Paul's recent books: Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? and Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next

In this short introductory episode, hosts Paul Johnson and Michael Kell introduce Econ to Icon. This is a podcast about people whose careers began in economics and went somewhere remarkable, exploring the substance of what they did and the choices they made about their career.

Paul Johnson has spent nearly four decades working on the economics of public policy — as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in government, and now at the University of Oxford, where he is head of Queen's College. Paul's interested in how economics shapes the decisions that affect all of us: taxes, pensions, public services, inequality, and how governments respond to crises.

Michael Kell has also spent most of his career as an economist — at the Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and in consulting. Today he works as a careers coach. He's interested in the people behind the public roles: the turning points, the decisions to leave one path and take another, and what it's actually like to sit in the room when big decisions are made.

In this trailer, Paul and Michael introduce themselves, explain what the podcast is about, and preview the six guests in the first series: