Abundance Across The Pond: Chris Curtis MP on Radio Abundance, Part One

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. It's time to build again, folks. Fascism never made America great, but when progressives build, that's where you'll find American greatness. Tonight's guest is Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North in the United Kingdom. He's a devout YIMBY in the UK's Labour Party. This summer, he hosted YIMBY Democrats Executive Director Steve Boyle at Parliament to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Steve surviving the July 7th London Underground terror attacks. The two then sat down together in London on July 10th, 2025, so that Chris Curtis MP could tell our American audience how he is helping the UK's Labour Party pursue abundance across the pond. That's coming up right now on Radio Abundance. Please welcome your host for the evening, YIMBY Democrats for America Executive Director Steve Boyle.

0:56 Hey, everybody. Welcome to Radio Abundance. My name is Steve Boyle. I am the Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. And we are live on location in London today with Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North. Chris, thanks for joining us on Radio Abundance. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here. It's great for you to be here, I suppose, is probably the better way of putting it here. But thank you for coming to this great city and chatting to us. I mean, it is a it is a tremendous honour. And as I mentioned, the other day at the Labour YIMBY summer party, it genuinely it is the honour of a lifetime, no matter what happens from here on out, because I'm not in London to hang out with you. That's very fortunate for me. I'm here because 20 years ago, I survived the July 7th terrorist attacks. And it felt very important for reasons I could hardly begin to explain to be back here for the anniversary. And it turns out to have been because a couple days before coming.

1:52 The Labour YIMBY folks reached out to me, asked me if I'd do a podcast with them. I said, you're never going to believe it. I'm coming to London. They said, you're never going to believe it. We have like 10 things booked that week. Do you want to do all of them? And so we have gotten to meet each other. And here we are sitting down together. Yeah, no, it's very good to very good to have met you and very good to form these transatlantic partnerships to beat the scourge of NIMBYism and hopefully get both of our great countries building again, because it's the only way we can we can start to solve the problems that are both our nations face. I mean, it's incredibly exciting, right? Like our nations are clearly their family members.

2:28 And yeah, I mean, siblings that bicker from time to time. But yeah, that's the family, right? You you have a kid, you raise the kid, a kid gets older and says, I want more agency. You say, I don't think so. Kid says, I think so. Who's the kid in this? We're the kid. We're the kid. You're the you're the parents. And eventually we got to leave the nest. And then after a little time of tension, we we become quite close again and have been. Yeah, I mean, if you if you if you follow the analogy to its end, I mean, eventually you're going to be caring for us. And I'm not sure how I feel.

2:57 But no, I think it's I it is. Look, we've done a lot together as nations from, you know, supporting each other in democracy to defeating fascism. And if we can help each other to build, that's fantastic. And what I mean by help each other really is to learn from each other, because I think the best way to go about this, the best way to help each other is to share information and also to share case studies. So I'm excited that we get to do that today, because even our what I think is our very wonkish and worldly audience, there's things, you know, about the UK and there's things you don't. I think many people will, you know, be able to name your prime minister, I think, and perhaps the last few, they will have knowledge of, you know, certain UK scandals and historical developments. I'd be surprised if a lot of people know what Milton Keynes North is.

3:46 Massive shame, that is. Well, tell us about it. So Milton Keynes is probably one of the places in the UK that would feel most familiar and at home to an American visiting. We have we have these things that are incredibly rare in the UK, actually, which is roads that run straight. And we have a grid system like you have in D.C. and lots of other places. And that is basically because it is a new town, new city. So I am the first member of parliament. It's the same age as my mum. I'm the first member of parliament that was born and grew up in the new town, now city of Milton Keynes. We've got a population of about 300,000, but was built and designed by the 1960s Labour government, saw the massive housing shortage that the country faced and realised, particularly here in London, that we needed to start building new places and new settlements to live in.

4:33 And Milton Keynes was the biggest and most successful of those places and has consistently grown ever since. So, you know, over the past decade, even still, we've been building between two and three thousand homes every single year. We are on a trajectory to become a city of about 500,000 over the next 15, 20 years. And I think what's most exciting is we built this new settlement now, this new city where so many people have made their home. But we've also built a massive economic success story. So it's halfway between London and Birmingham, two of our biggest cities here. It's also halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, our two big university cities here, which I'm sure many of your audience have heard of. It's slap bang in the middle of all four of those. So it's got really good connections to all of those places. And partly because of that, it's got a real thriving economy.

5:21 So we've got a massive growing tech sector, robotics, loads of other exciting stuff going on, more startups than almost anywhere else in the country. So anyone that's coming over or looking to invest in the UK, please do consider it because it is a really exciting, vibrant place and somewhere that I'm determined to continue, continue building and ensuring that kids growing up there today can have the same fantastic start in life that I had growing up in there a few decades ago. And let's just double stamp something you said, right? Before we even get to your role in Parliament, how UK housing law works, how you're trying to change that. You mentioned Milton Keynes or Milton Keynes North is a new town, which is to say in the thousand year history of your nation, you can correct that. I know there's several pieces to the United Kingdom and maybe you have different ideas of where they'd be.

6:08 You know, I'm going Battle of Hastings. We can refine that. We're getting the Bay of Tapestry coming over. That was announced this week. Ooh. We've already gone off on a tangent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The French are sending us over the Bay of Tapestry for a little bit next year. Come back and see it. Yeah. But anyway, we're excited. Dangerous precedent for you if we're starting to return artifacts to different places. I refuse to comment.

6:29 But in this long history, not so long ago, your people in government said, hey, you know this place where there is nothing. There should be a town here. We will build it. And you're not the only one. So I'm very curious. You started to allude to this. But, man, I think an American audience would be interested in why that decision was made and how it was executed, right? Was it just the government building things? Was it a public-private partnership? How did this work? Yes, it was a big government decision. And it was far more sort of government-led and executed. It was a development corporation, as we call them, that was set up, which is a public-owned organization. It had compulsory purchase powers. So, I mean, my great-great-grandparents were farmers on the land.

7:15 They got the farm compulsory purchase purchased off them by the government in order to build it. So it was a level of sort of forcefulness and government control. A lot of it was private money still. There was a lot of private capital that was invested in it. But it was a lot more sort of government-centred and government-focused than you would necessarily do today. But it was just because there was such a determination at the time to break through the housing crisis that the country faced. I think what was also interesting about it, I mean, obviously, kind of having a kind of quite well-planned city was quite interesting. You talk about the grid system and everything else. But it was also a real sort of being able to start from scratch, picking what is effectively a load of farms and going, let's build something here, really allowed for innovation. So they built entire housing estates to look at how, you know, if you build in slightly different ways, it can lead to homes that use less energy because there was a fuel crisis at the time, thinking about how to build far more efficiently so that you can get, you know, more bang for your buck with building.

8:15 You know, we learned so much through the process of building as well. And actually, you know, we're now thinking about whether we – well, the government in the UK is now thinking about repeating this process with a series of more modern new towns. And what's interesting as part of that process that we're going for is looking back to the new towns of the past, particularly Milton Keynes, and thinking, what did we get right? What did we get wrong? What can we learn from them to ensure that the places that we build in the future can be even better? And that's quite exciting. Like, actually, we talk about building and development and the things that it achieves, new homes, whatever. But actually, this idea of building somewhere new and the innovation and what you can learn from it, I think is also really exciting. Well, it sounds like the UK government has stolen my next question, which is, what did you learn? What would you do the same and what would you do differently? Oh, God, we're going right into the weeds now.

9:01 I mean, I do go to Milton Keynes because you'll know what I mean. Firstly, landscape-led development. So every kid in Milton Keynes grew up within sort of five minutes of a local park, local shop. There's some conspiracy theories around like 15-minute cities now. This idea that, you know, you can have everything that you want within 15 minutes. But you can't leave. Well, yeah, you can leave. But you can actually leave. You can leave the 15-minute city. Having things close to you is not bad. You can leave. But, you know, you've got your local shop. You've got your hairdresser. You've got a fantastic local park to go and kick a football around in. 40% of Milton Keynes is blue and green spaces. We've got to think about as much waterfront as Venice because we've got balancing lakes and beautiful things like that. So all of that sort of landscaping side of things we got really well.

9:46 It was built in the 1960s. So the bits we got wrong were kind of of the era, the first of which was car dependence. We didn't have a proper mass rapid transport system built into the city.

9:57 Both of these things as well, I'm sort of trying to retrofit now as we continue to grow the city and think about how we get it right. So we need to – it was too car dependent and not enough thinking about a decent functioning public transport system. And the second of which was densification. So there just wasn't – it just wasn't built dense enough, particularly in the centre of the city. And again, we're now kind of doing this redevelopment to add denser areas to the city because we know that leads to sort of more sustainable living. Yeah. I'm very interested in the sort of public and private aspect of this, right? You know, as YIMBYs, especially as YIMBYs are Democrats, but as YIMBYs, we just want to build, man. So that means if there's a private citizen who wants to build a new building or a new city, great, please do it. Do it without taxpayer dollars and build something nice. But also, you know, as Democrats, as progressives who want to solve problems and want our government to do things, you know, love the idea.

10:48 I love the idea of building new cities. Not everybody does. It's a big project. But certainly love the idea of building new homes, public housing, just infrastructure, trains, just build. And so I'm curious both in the history of the new towns, in how you imagine the future, you know, the role of government, the role of private markets, when they're complementary but separate and when they're sort of together and partnered. Yeah, I mean, it comes from a far more statist era of Britain, right? So like back in the time when they were building Milton Keynes, you know, it was state-owned energy companies and water companies and like a hell of a lot more than that, to be honest. So it just comes from, you know, Milton Keynes is of its era and we certainly would be leaning far more on the private sector to do a lot of this now than we were then, albeit in partnerships. Look, I mean, one of the big differences you've got between, well, one of the many differences you've got between the UK and the US is ultimately we're just a lot smaller as an island.

11:42 We're a lot denser population-wise. And that means that one of the things we have to think about a lot more here than I think you do in the US, particularly in places like Texas, where there's lots of building happening at the moment, is land values. Ultimately, you know, it becomes very hard to build all of the infrastructure that you want alongside new houses if all of the value that's needed to build the infrastructure gets swallowed up in the value of the land. So I think there needs to be in the UK, in a smaller country like this, some level of state involvement in keeping down those land values so the private sector, when it does come along and build, can afford to build the roads, the schools, the GP surgeries, all of that, a very extra infrastructure that's going to be required to build somewhere truly great. Well, let's talk now about the differences in sort of law and housing when it comes to the US and the UK.

12:30 I was on a podcast the other day, and the wonderful host, Eve McQuillan, you know, asked me, you know, who makes – and we're talking about how things come to pass, and she says, who makes the decision? And I tried to explain, and then she was like, no, but who makes the decision? And it was clear. I was like, oh, my God, I'm messing up this answer. Maybe I don't know anything. I'm totally unqualified for the role. And I was like, hold on, no. The point of the US system, every aspect, is set up under the belief that if only one person makes a decision, that's how you get tyranny. And if you want to prevent tyranny, you make things diffuse, and that is working great for us.

13:02 That is a joke. Yeah, that's what I've heard. That's what I've heard. Yeah, it's all going really well. And so, of course, what we have wound up with is a system where, you know, okay, so at the federal level, you know, President, Senate, Congress, they, you know, you've got any different change in parties and sort of balance. You've also got the difference between, you know, federal, state, county, city, and those sort of diffused responsibilities. Yeah, responsibilities. And then when it comes to, you know, how buildings are determined, I mean, you both have that divided government in micro at every different level. But also, we have very purposefully made it so that, you know, so that it's hard for any one person to make decisions. And that, in a lot of cases, means anyone from the neighborhood can come out and say, I don't like this, and it doesn't happen.

13:48 Maybe because they can shut it down or just infinitely delay it and infinitely make it more expensive.

13:54 There's, you know, maybe some cases where somebody can sort of nudge something along within the government or outside. But mostly it's so diffused it's very tough for anything to happen. So I want to ask you the question Eve asked me. Who makes decisions? Well, firstly, we should start by acknowledging that, like, we have created a system in the UK that has made it far too difficult to build. We can't build the homes that this country needs, which means an entire generation, my generation, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to get on the housing ladder on a decent middle income in the UK. We failed to build the energy infrastructure that this country requires. So when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, we were dangerously reliant on foreign oil and gas, which meant that, you know, loads of people were pushed into poverty because they couldn't afford to heat their homes.

14:40 We failed to build the road and rail infrastructure that this country needs. A really good example of this is we were recently trying to build a high-speed rail network from London to Manchester. It's not going to get there because it was too expensive because the costs just exploded. And all of these are because we've set up a regulatory environment that makes it too difficult to get those projects over the line. If I take the HS2, just to give you one example, so the high-speed rail network is one example.

15:06 As part of that process, you know, it's taken years. It's taken decades. Politicians have flip-flopped back and forth on it. And then one of our regulators comes along and says, you need to build a £120 million bat tunnel to potentially save that because we've monitored the tracks and two bats flew over over this long period of time. So now you're going to have to build this massive tunnel. It's going to cost £120 million. Most people think it won't save the life of a single bat. And because of delays like that, because of costs associated with projects like that, there are now, you know, that railway line is now not going to reach the destination that it was supposed to. So we have built this regulatory network that makes it too difficult to build things. Now, that's the bad news. The good news is, and this is, I think, coming back to your question where we are different from the US, is the basis of our constitution is effectively parliamentary sovereignty.

15:58 So I'm a member of parliament. There's 650 of us. If the will is there among 326 of them, you can get pretty much anything done. You can undo anything that your predecessors have put in place. There is no kind of written constitution, particularly to block you. So it is parliament that has put all of these blockers in place. But it is parliament and parliament alone that can get us out of this mess. And thankfully, we now have a prime minister who is one of the members of parliament and, you know, gets to make a lot of these decisions, who describes himself as a proud Yimby. And we also, after the general election last year, have a new generation of MPs elected who know the scale of this problem. Many of us have lived the scale of this problem and are determined to move all of those blockages out of the way. All of those blockages that our predecessors have put in place, move them out of the way to get this country building again.

16:48 And so of parliament as a whole, and then of, I would say, the Labour Party as a whole. I mean, what do you think the breakdown is between kind of Yimby-Nimby? So, I mean, we had a bill that we were putting through parliament recently, the planning and infrastructure bill, which was a piece of legislation that was aiming to address most of these issues. There's just over 400 Labour MPs. I think 15 voted against it. So to give you a sort of breakdown, you know, that's a very small percentage that you would describe as NIMBY. And I think that just shows the work that's been done to win this important fight within, at least within the British Labour Party. So I have a bit of a three-part question, and it will be long, but I'm happy to rest my voice while you give me a trilogy.

17:36 I wonder in, you know, in episode one, if you can tell me, like, just what is the last sort of 10 years history of, like, realizing there's a housing problem, making change, how that movement spreads? And then I'm very curious, you know, both what you expect to see in the next 10 years and what you'd like to see in the next 10 years.

17:58 I mean, the last 10 years is interesting. There certainly has been a Yimby movement that's existed over that period in the UK, but it has really crescendoed over a very short period of time, I think really in the last two years. So, you know, I think you're noticing a similar thing in the US as well. There is finally this movement to kind of make the argument, you know, you look at Ezra Klein's book and the impact that that's had on democratic politics. We are kind of moving on the same timeline here in the UK. This kind of argument for supply-side pro-growth reforms made in a kind of what we describe as a centre-left social democratic way, I think is really interesting. I certainly think that we're getting that in the UK as well.

18:39 It's been a slow movement that's reached us here, but it really took off at similar timeframes to you. The Prime Minister, a year out from the last general election, stood up on the conference stage.

18:49 He was the leader of the opposition at the time and, you know, described himself as a Yimby, talked about how he was going to get Britain building again. And that, you know, at that party conference, we'd started organising for everyone to have Yimby lanyards on and things like that. So there was this real, you know, really started to hit its stride then. And it was just basically the fact that, you know, we've had real problems getting the British economy growing. We haven't really grown the British economy for two decades. You are suddenly getting an entire generation of young people who feel like they've been screwed, who feel like they've had their future taken away from them. They're right to feel like that. And they're suddenly starting to get motivated, to get organised, to get their voices heard. This kind of Yimby movement is speaking to them. And finally, we're starting to make a difference in getting it to cut through. And, you know, that was that moment, that conference speech was the moment when you started to notice the political cut through.

19:38 Now you've got a government determined to follow through on it. I think that's really quite exciting. I mean, look, where do I want us to end up is like a pretty easy answer. Like we've said we're going to build 1.5 million new homes in Britain across this parliament. I want us to hit that. But then I want us to be for the five years after that to be even more ambitious, to be thinking, can we hit 2 million over that period? Because it's only really freeing up. We're probably already 4 million homes short. So it's only really by being incredibly ambitious that we can actually start to get people's house prices down. We know that we need to end our reliance on foreign oil and gas. So getting to the place where 100% pretty much of the energy that we need in the UK is built in the UK.

20:25 I want us to be hitting that point in the next 10 years, making sure we're building the solar farms, the wind turbines, the nuclear power stations, because the future is going to have to be nuclear that's going to be required. And look, like I want to be able to get around this country quickly and easily. So, you know, we invented the bloody railway track. We invented the railway. You know, we're the home of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. And for some bloody reason, we now can't build a railway line that runs from London to the north. So in 10 years time, I want to see a high speed rail network that can connect the great cities of this country. So London to Birmingham to Manchester to Leeds. And I think we can achieve all of those things if we have the ambition to break through the blockages that our predecessors have put in place to make it too difficult to build what this country needs.

21:14 And what's stopping you?

21:16 Nothing's stopping us. We've started making the progress.

21:21 I mean, we're not going as quick as I'd like.

21:25 The problems are twofold. Firstly, we still have fights on our hand against the blockers, against the stakeholders who keep pushing back on sort of pro-building policies, who constantly want to make the perfect, the enemy of the good. We need to keep that fight up. We are making progress on that. So that's one of the things that I think is still stopping us from being as ambitious as we need to be because you're constantly upset, worried about upsetting stakeholders or, you know, some people who are politically motivated to hold us back. I think the second thing that's a far bigger obstacle, I'm sure you have these kind of issues in the US as well, is the state's ability to enact these kind of changes.

22:14 We have a British state that too often in recent years has looked for reasons to say no rather than looking for reasons to say yes. For our entire regulators and regulatory system, they've just got in a culture of doing that. They're far too risk averse. They're far too likely to look for barriers to put in the way. So, you know, we can talk about the changes that we're making to the planning system and we are and they're good. But actually, the thing that we need to shift as well is the culture. We need everybody to be looking for reasons to say yes, to build, to get things going. And that's a little bit trickier. That comes with time. But hopefully, with a government that's pushing in that direction, that's shoving in that direction, that can then start to kind of feed out to the wider government ecosystem. Let's focus on the culture for a second. And I'm curious how you think you can change that.

23:01 And when I say you, I don't just mean party, I just don't just mean government. I mean you personally. And this is partly informed. Here's where I want to lead you here. I got a chance to hang out with someone from your team the other day and we were talking about, you know, sort of things you've said and stuff you like to talk about. And I forget the exact phrase. It involved the word victory.

23:22 And it got me very excited because – and you'll tell me what it is and you'll tell us the context in a second.

23:28 You know, one of the things that we are trying to do, I think, is the same, which is to say, you know, we have to – if we want to build a future, we have to understand, like, our past. And I think a sort of a deep, like, real, authentic, but also patriotic, mythological, vigorous way, right? In America, it feels often like you have, you know, one party that thinks our greatness is behind us and we need to go backwards and maybe one party that thinks our greatness never was. And, you know, if you want to build the future, you absolutely do need the numbers, the data, the technocracy, the, you know, optimizing to understand truly what you are doing and being sort of methodical and realistic about it.

24:15 But you need a little bit of the vigour too and the storytelling and tapping into the greatness of past generations to be, in their image, perhaps the greatest yet. Yeah, no, I think it's completely true. Look, I think it is our patriotic duty to get Britain building again. I think, you know, you look around the world, you look at people who want to do this country harm, you look at the threats that this country is going to face.

24:39 You know, ultimately, for our ability, you know, we're talking a lot about defence policy at the moment, given kind of Russian aggression and what's happening with China and lots of other countries, reasonably talking about defence policy. But the best defence policy you can have is a decent economy, right? The US would not have won the Cold War if it didn't economically beat the Russians. You can talk about nuclear weapons as much as you like. It was the economics that won on the Cold War.

25:06 So I think the expression you were talking about, we had big posters that were up during World War II here in the UK called Dig for Victory. And it was the idea that everybody should start to be making their own food because it was too hard to import food into the UK because of German submarines. And I just think, you know, telling that story again, you know, the only way that this country can continue to sustain itself, defend itself in such an unstable world in the 21st century is if we once again build for victory. It is the lack of building, you know, whether that's the new homes, whether that's because we've become reliant on fossil fuels from dictators, you know, whether that's the economic damage that's been done by lack of building. We need to be able to defend ourselves. We need to be able to sandal our own two feet. We need to be able to be proud of the country that we live in.

25:53 And we can only do those things if we move the sort of crap blockages out of the way to be able to build great things again that can make us rich and prosperous.

26:05 And and and and brilliant and proud and patriotic. And I think we do need to we do need to tell that story because because often, you know, the people that the people that block the NIMBYs, they try to make out like they're trying to defend Britain and they are not. If they continue to win, they're going to ruin this country. They're going to destroy this country. They're going to steal the next generation's futures away from them. And we cannot let that happen. Give me that phrase one more time. Build for victory. And might I add build America and defeat fascism. Damn right.

26:35 Good. All right. We've waited long enough. I've had to keep myself at bay because you and I have a shared passion, which is surprisingly, extremely relevant to the NIMBY movement. Do you want to tell us about an exciting thing that's happening? This has made it onto my Wikipedia page now because I talk about it that much. And I get mocked for this around Parliament. You know that.

26:58 You know, I believe it. And I think there's an FDR quote that's like, I hear their hatred and I welcome it. Like, bring it. Bring the mocking because we are right. Tell us what we're talking about. We love theme parks. We are big theme park enthusiasts. And excitingly, the great American company of Universal have made the decision to build a theme park here in the UK, not too far away from my constituency. So, Universal Bedford, I think it's going to be called, with construction starting in the next couple of years and hopefully opening the start of the next decade. So, this is a really exciting project for the UK, massive investment, thousands of jobs, really good opportunity, another way of getting this country's stamp on the world stage.

27:45 But most importantly, building a fantastic theme park, which we've lacked. We've never had a kind of theme park of that scale here in the UK before. We lost out on getting Disneyland to the French. If there's anything you know about Britain, we absolutely hate losing things to the French. So, this is our way of getting our own back. And let's be honest, Universal is better than Disney these days anyway.

28:07 I can't possibly comment.

28:10 Is that the kind of thing that gets you? Is that the kind of view that really divides your audience in the US? The audience of Radio Abundance? No. My friends? Can't touch it. So, instead, I will talk about both. I think about this all the time because I think a lot of people, and I think especially Yimby's, well, no, I think some people are aware of this, but I think a lot of people who follow housing in America might be very surprised at the idea that in the suburbs of Southern California, there is a gorgeous, dense, walkable neighborhood of beautiful pedestrian, tree-lined streets, and mixed-use buildings, and gorgeous architecture of public transportation. But if it actually let people live in those buildings, which look like apartment buildings, it would be illegal. If it didn't have roller coasters, it would be illegal.

28:57 And as you say, Universal, if Universal is being Disney, then a moment of eclipse has, I mean, a really towering achievement right now in Orlando, the new theme park. So, within the year, in Orlando, Florida, not the most sort of dense, urban, public transport town, in Orlando, Florida, there is a new, gorgeous, I mean, like, European neighborhood, like, beautiful, classical architecture. The type you think is from lost civilizations that we could never possibly sort of recreate. And it's been recreated seemingly overnight. And, again, if people could actually, like, live there or stay there, it would be illegal. If it didn't have roller coasters, it would be illegal. And I think about this all the time because my background is in themed entertainment.

29:42 It is from the immersive theatrical industry. I regularly throw big summits and gatherings with executives from places like Disney and Universal Studios, the folks who design the rides, who design entire lands, who design the big immersive experiences. And so now in my political life, I'll talk to people who say we can't possibly build architecture that beautiful. We can't possibly build neighborhoods that dense. No city planner could do that. And, by the way, no government could do that because you could never have a top-down beautiful city. And I think I know people who build top-down beautiful cities. I have their phone numbers. And if I can add one more thing. Very quickly as well. Oh, no, you can add one more thing. You're in parliament. Go for it, man. No, no, sorry. They build them very quickly. They build them very quickly. Very quickly. This is not something that has to take 40 years.

30:28 It can go up much quicker than that. And even though you cannot stay overnight, people still spend hundreds of dollars a day just to visit and be there. I mean, if you were wondering if there is demand in America for lovely, walkable, beautiful neighborhoods and public transit. Parks and green spaces. People will pay hundreds of dollars to fly there, hundreds of dollars to visit. They don't even get to stay overnight. And, by the way, look, the kids might love The Little Mermaid. And some adults will bring the kids. Quite a lot of the demographic is not coming with kids. And I think they are paying hundreds of dollars not to see Mickey Mouse, but because it's a really nice place to spend a day. No, I completely agree.

31:14 You talk about theme and entertainment. I mean, what's always – what is it – I think you touched on this. Like what – I do sort of quite enjoy theme parks as an art is because if you take sort of film or cinema or anything like that. Say you've got – well, there's lots of – Harry Potter, isn't there, and Universal in the US. In LA, yeah, yeah. If you take the Hogwarts Express train, you know, if you've got that for the film, don't necessarily make a full train. They'd do a little bit here, a little bit there. They'd just generate whatever they needed to get the camera shots they needed to. But actually, somewhere like a theme park, you have to think about the whole thing. You have to design it in an immersive way. You have to think about how everything looks from different angles. You have to think about people walking around and experiencing it. And the level of design, of architecture, of creativity that is required to do something like that, I think, is head and shoulders above almost anything else in the kind of arts design space, which I think is one of the reasons why I just find them so endlessly fascinating.

32:13 And I'm so excited to get one here in the UK. I talked a little bit before about how we've really struggled to get theme parks in the UK. And we talked a lot about nimbyism. But this is one of the big reasons why we've struggled in the UK. Our history is littered with people trying to do this and struggling because of our regulations. So there was a big plan to have what we call a London resort.

32:36 We're in London today, but it would have been about sort of 30 miles east of here. That got killed because they found jumping spiders. And apparently the protection of these jumping spiders, which I'm pretty confident are not even native to the UK, was considered more important than the massive investment and building project that they wanted to do there.

32:56 Fort Park, which is to the west of London, theme park there, for the first 30, 40 years of their existence, because of what a restriction that was put in place by the local council, they had to pretend or they had to come up with reasons why all of the rides they wanted to build had an educational purpose. Now, that obviously limited their ability to do the kind of brilliant, creative, innovative design, because it was a restriction on their ability to do that. Alton Towers, which is another one of our theme parks to the north, they're not allowed to build anything taller than the tallest tree line, which again limits their potential because neighbours were upset about how it ruined the view. Livian, which is one of the rides that was the first vertical drop coaster in the world, as you sort of came over the top and you're looking down over the vertical drop, the cars used to freeze and a speaker to the left would go, don't look down.

33:48 That's turned the speaker off because neighbours complained about people on the roller coaster screaming too loudly. So we've had all of these restrictions in place in the past that have just stopped our theme parks from being brilliant, usually caused by people who just are determined to kill off any fun in this country. But finally now, because we've got a government that has pushed through the barriers because of the changes we're making to the planning system, Universal Studios has the confidence to put this massive investment in the UK and to build something truly great that meets the kind of criteria and story that you were just telling us about the fantastic parks that they've managed to build in the US. I mean, I think this is such an illustrative example, right? Because again, in both our countries, there are so many, not just restrictions placed on builders of homes, but like conditions. You can do this, but only if you do this.

34:34 And when you start applying that to other industries, it gets insane. If every movie and TV show, the government was like, well, yeah, you can set it in this era, but you have to add this love interest too. You'd think this, I mean, this sucks. Get the government out of this. Restaurants, it's great that the government is like, the food must be clean and not make you sick. But if the government was like, every time you use tomatoes, you must also use mint, you know, and look, sometimes that works. But if they did it every time, none of your business. Let people make art. Let people create. Make sure it's safe, but let them go. We've got a term that's creeping into British politics. There's an essay done here by a guy called Joe Hill on the term everythingism. I think in the US you call this everything bagel. That's exactly right. Yeah, and it's exactly that.

35:20 It's, you know, any time the government interacts with anything and, you know, has to make a decision, it has to ensure that whatever it's looking at, let's say you're building a house, that has to be solving every single societal problem at the same time. You know, it needs to have this and it needs to have that. And, you know, how's it going to, you know, how's it going to solve all of these problems? A government procurement is another good example of this. The amount of hoops that anybody who wants to do a government contract has to jump through, which is almost completely irrelevant to the contract. But because the government uses these processes to solve all of society's problems at the same time. And ultimately, if you try and solve every problem all of the time, you end up solving none of them. The planning system is a really good example of how that's happened.

36:05 But we have to think about it kind of right across our regulatory sphere. And again, this kind of comes back to the Ezra Klein abundance movement. It's actually finally starting to have these rational discussions from a centre left perspective, because actually this is not doing any good for the people that we were elected to fight for and doing no good for the people whose lives we should be determined to improve. I mean, my evolving metaphor around everything bagel liberalism is, look, I like everything bagel. If anything, everything bagels are my favourite bagels. Throw on all the seeds. Yeah. But it does not affect my ability to get an everything bagel if you also make and sell other bagels. And by the way. That don't cost thousands and thousands of pounds for a bagel.

36:50 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? If one day the poppy seeds don't come in, like you don't go out of business. You just make other bagels until they do. You know what I mean? We can do multiple things. People like variety and they like choice. And it's good when you can have everything at once, but you can also appeal to different people and you can do both. And that's beautiful and delicious. Yeah. No, it's exactly that. And, you know, these are not easy arguments to make politically because often you're, you know, I'll give you one example of where this would be a really difficult political argument to make is in the procurement system in the UK. Anybody who's bidding for a government contract, any form of government contract, it doesn't matter if you're running a survey for them or anything, they have to do massive amounts of paperwork to talk about what they're doing to solve modern slavery.

37:41 Because a few years ago, the government was determined to think about how you solve modern slavery. And rather than put money into it, they said, well, we'll just do it through the procurement system. And that's on top of the thousands and thousands of other documents they have to fill in. Now, to come along and to go, why does every government contract have to think about modern slavery? Obviously, you'll get the political response. We don't care about modern slavery. Do you? Of course I care about modern slavery. I just think possibly you could make the argument that every single government contractor having to do massive amounts of paperwork to think about modern slavery in a way that rules out small businesses, makes things incredibly expensive, is not necessarily the way of providing government services and certainly isn't the way of combating modern slavery.

38:27 So it's a difficult political argument, but ultimately it's one that we need to have the strength and confidence to make. Well, this, I think, brings us nicely into the topic of energy. And in fact, you mentioned, you know, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the book Abundance. And that's a good reminder to apply this way of thinking to a lot of different areas. You've mentioned energy a few times already. I'll tell you our perspective. Yeah. And then I'll connect it to something I've heard from you and then I'll let you rip and roar with it. You know, on this topic of we care about modern slavery and we'd like to actually do something about it, I care quite a lot about climate change. I think it is a planetary emergency and existential threat to our way of life and ability to thrive as human beings. And if you think so, too, but you don't let people build solar and wind and nuclear power, to me, that's worse than not knowing.

39:21 Climate change deniers in Texas are running laps around climate change true believers in California. So no longer can we say that the non-believers are the problem. We are the problem. This is devastating. And the reason I want to make this transition is because that passion is even more immediate, I think, for you because of the national security implications you mentioned. Yeah. No, I – since you used the Texas, California example on Monday, I've repeated that. We had lunch on Monday. Repeated that multiple times when I've been talking to people because I think it's such a good example.

39:55 You know, over here you have people who are sort of ideologically don't believe in climate change but want to build things. And over here you have the complete opposite. And these people are building more green tech than these. Now, that shows you more than anything else that the barrier to solving climate change is not really the political debate. It's bloody nimbyism. It's, you know, not having the strength or the willingness to build the green infrastructure that's required. And that Texas, California example could not illustrate it better. And that's why it is far more important, actually, for us to win the argument on building things even than it is on winning the argument that climate change is a problem. And we don't actually have the same debate here in the UK. Almost everybody already believes it's a problem. But, yes, it's a national security thing here as well.

40:43 Ultimately, we need to be less reliant on foreign imports for our own energy market in an increasingly unstable world. And that involves building infrastructure here in the UK. And that might as well be green given the other challenges that we face. I think the other bit, which we've touched on a little bit before as well, is in a world where we are expecting AI data centers, we're expecting demand for energy to explode. The only real way we can reach the kind of energy abundant world that we would like is through nuclear power and new nuclear power. So I think the big race over the next 20 to 30 years is going to be who can get particularly small modular nuclear reactors online as quickly as possible.

41:31 The UK and possibly the US as well, I don't know the situation there, are not winning that global race at the moment. Canada is doing quite a good job. South Korea is obviously doing a fantastic job. But creating a regulatory framework that is able to support that innovation is really important. And we do not have it in the UK. You know, we've struggled to build nuclear power stations for decades now because, for example, you know, obviously all nuclear power stations will emit some level of radiation. We have limited the amount of radiation they're allowed to emit to effectively the same as eating a pack of Brazil nuts. And it's like if your risk management, you know, adds billions or millions of pounds onto the cost of something in order to minimize, you know, in order to mitigate down to that smaller level, you're probably getting your balance wrong.

42:24 And so we've got to think about a regulatory environment that, yes, obviously prioritizes safety, that obviously ensures that something like Fukushima can never happen again, but is not killing off innovation and is not killing off the kind of energy generation that we know we're going to need to be able to protect this country's security and future. One of the facts I find most inconvenient is, you know, I'm not sure that we'd have such a threat from climate change today if my side of the aisle hadn't stopped Richard Nixon from building nuclear plants across America. Do you know how many Americans have been killed in a nuclear accident? I shouldn't say killed. I should say injured. I shouldn't say injured. I should say sick for a day. Yeah. It is zero. Yeah. And I was asking an energy expert about Fukushima the other day, and Iran should, like, really run through it.

43:12 And not only is the impact of that, I think, far less than the imagined impact. You know, if we're going to talk about the threats to lives and health from energy or dirty energy, you know, I question whether foreign policy is remotely in scope for this podcast. And I think it isn't. I have strong feelings, but I think it is out of scope. But you've got to go back to first principles, and one of ours is defeat fascism. So, Russia.

43:40 Russia is invading and slaughtering and attempting to wipe out the people and identity of the largest democracy in Europe. They have made nuclear threats against London. When that war started, correct me if I'm wrong, you know, it's one thing to, we don't like it when we pay energy bills and they go to big corporations. When you pay energy bills, they go to Vladimir Putin. And that also means he has leverage over you to freeze you, to drive your costs up. Am I wrong? Do I capture the situation on the stakes? Yeah, well, I mean, it's not quite as direct as that, but certainly, yes. I mean, ultimately, if you are reliant on an international oil and gas market to the extent that we are, you are incredibly vulnerable to things that happen overseas and often the actions of some of the worst people around the world like Vladimir Putin.

44:33 And we've seen that happen in recent years to the devastating consequences of, you know, families where I grew up. So, where, we talked a little bit about all the momentum behind the Yimby movement right now. What kind of momentum is there behind building nuclear power in the United Kingdom? I think we're getting there. I think, you know, it certainly started from a solve the housing crisis perspective, but particularly since the Russian-Ukrainian war, the importance of, and this was a big part of our election message that we were putting out. Some of our most popular policies, almost all of our most popular policies were in this space going into the last general election. So, it's a key part of what voters are thinking about. When you poll people, they'll still say it's some of the most important issues facing the country.

45:18 So, I think there's a real perception of the importance of getting energy here in the UK. We do need to kind of make that jump from that to nuclear, which is still support for nuclear power has risen quite dramatically, but it's still not necessarily as high as other forms of energy. So, I still think we need to continue to fight to make the case that it is an important, not just an important, a necessary part of the, and probably a growing part of the energy mix here in the UK. But we've got, you know, we've got a nuclear power station being built. We've just signed off on 14 billion quid to build a, to start on a second large-scale nuclear reactor. So, there is progress being made in this space. You know, you mentioned the last election. Yeah. Which reminds me, we jumped straight into, yeah, you won. We won. But you didn't just win as a party. You won. I did. Chris Curtis, who are you?

46:04 How did you win? Where did you come from?

46:06 I was a pollster for 10 years before I did this job. So, I worked with, I've been a big part. So, the Labour Party has lost four elections on the trot. And, you know, I would argue kept putting leaders in place who weren't particularly good at appealing to voters. And I, over my polling career, got increasingly frustrated with that and started to work with a group of people in the Labour Party to think about, firstly, how do we get a leader elected, leader of the Labour Party who can start to appeal to the voters again. And then think about how we can put together a policy platform, a comms platform that can actually win a general election. So, I started working on that project and eventually you reach the point where you go, I've been working on this for so long, you've got to put your money where your mouth was.

46:53 Mouth is our sick to death of what I'd describe as pretty useless MPs in my area, you know, in my city, who never really got it. They'd come from somewhere else. They never really wanted to go out and fight for the brilliant place that I grew up in. So, wanted to be that first person who was born then grew up there to represent it and actually start fighting about it and think about how we can drag the place into the 21st century and think about how we can build all the great things that I know my city needs. And all of those things coming together made me think, you know what, I'm going to put my name forward, I'm going to fight and campaign for my home. And thankfully, last year, just over a year now, the voters of Milton Keynes North put their trust in me and I hope I'm starting to repay that trust.

47:39 You know, I think of this conversation and this visit, it's an opportunity to bring our, I mean, I don't want to pretend that our Yimby movements don't have a lot of connections. By the way, shout out to M. Nolan Gray, you are the, by far, unanimously most popular American Yimby in the UK. You are big in the UK. I know you have friends here, but even people who don't know you, you're the one, you're the pop star here. I just want you to know. So our movements are connected that goes long before me, but I like to think I can bring some, I bring some messages to you and I can bring some back with me. And I do wonder what you would want Yimby's and Americans to know, to know about really anything right now. It could be the UK, it could be the Yimby movement. And when you think of what you wanted to say, you don't have to tell me. If you're up for it, you can tell us.

48:27 That's quite a big question. Yeah, I probably should have prepped you for that one. I really just thought about it 30 seconds ago. I think, I think, I think, I think our fights are the same. You know, we've got, we've got different challenges. We've got different political contexts, but the arguments that we need to make and the fights that we need to win are the same. And I think what I'd say to people in the US and actually what I'd say to people in the UK is do not underestimate the stakes of this fight. We often get dragged off by the day-to-day political debates, whatever culture war issue it is that's dominating the news cycle. And for the right reasons. And often like, you know, they're really, really bloody important issues that you need to campaign on. But we cannot allow that to constantly distract us from the far more important issue, which is unless we get our economies growing again, unless we get dramatically increase our ability to build things, to build homes, to build the energy infrastructure.

49:24 We are stealing the future away from the next generation. And that is not acceptable. It is not a fight that we can afford to lose. And we need to keep battling. And I will stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone in the UK who's willing to take up that fight. And I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone in the US who's also battling such an important fight as well. Well, Chris Curtis, Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North, thank you for standing shoulder to shoulder with me. Thank you for standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the YIMBY movement and us in the United States. I think we can build a new era of the transatlantic special relationship. I think we can build up our countries, build up democracy and our alliance.

50:13 And I'm excited to see what we can build together. Lovely. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. And thank you for welcoming me to London.

50:22 Thank you for listening to Radio Abundance. Now it's time for you to join the movement. There's no time to lose. Head to yimbydemocrats.org slash join to sign up and make sure to follow us at radioabundance.substack.com. And thank you.