this is bbc news — the headlines. senior conservatives have been drawn into an argument over islamophobia, after the conservative mp lee anderson said "islamists" had "got control" of the mayor of london. the deputy prime minister refused to say whether the comments were islamophobic. donald trump is one step closer to the republican presidential nomination, after easily beating rival nikki haley in the south carolina primary. the former president won his opponent's home state with a 20—point margin — making it his fourth consecutive victory. israel's main opposition leader criticises police for suppressing anti—government protests. demonstrators had been demanding the release of hostages held by hamas, the resignation of prime minister benjamin netanyahu and early elections. oppenheimer is the big winner at the screen actors guild awards. it takes the top prize of best cast, as well as best actor for cillian murphy.

barbra streisand was also presented with a lifetime achievement award. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than a news interrogation of someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. there's one question that many people often ask. does it make any difference who you vote for? that is a question faced by governments of all colours in all parts of the world, not least as we face so many global problems, whether climate change, the pandemic, stagnant economies, health services struggling to cope with the demands that are put on them. my guest this week argues

that what you should do as a politician is back long—term missions rather than short—term headline—grabbing pledges. she's one of the most influential economists on the planet, mariana mazzucato. and i spoke to her long after she'd been advising both government and the opposition and shortly before the labour party abandoned that headline goal of investing £28 billion for a green prosperity plan. mariana mazzucato, welcome. thank you. i guess this week, like every other week, is pretty busy. what's on the agenda this week? so besides running my 60 person institute at university college london, the institute for innovation and public purpose, on wednesday i'm off to davos for two days. on the back of that, a meeting with the global commission on the economics of water, which i co—chair, which is all about how do we treat water as a collective common good and have serious collective action on our underlying

massive water problems? and next week, i'm going to colombia, the country, not the university, to work with the president petro�*s team around really rethinking government in order to put climate at the centre of a green economic transition. it's another incredibly hectic week. why do you think you've got the influence you've got? i think, you know, there's great ideas out there and not everyone is lucky enough to be listened to. but i think it might be because what i've been trying to do is to really unpick the roots of the problem instead of always addressing the symptom of the problems. and my take has been that the underlying economic thinking, economic theory, economic framing is part of the problem. it's part of the reason we have policies that are very reactive, not proactive, and why we also have a bit of a depressed public sector, globally. so that's what you mean by mission, is it? because i think when people hear the word missions, not if they've read your book, but simply hear a politician

use it, they think it's kind of interchangeable with promise or pledge, and theyjust say, "yeah, yeah, yeah. it's just more words." yeah, i mean, i've really come to the concept of missions after a bigger concept. so missions to me are just an example of how to do what, how to actually think about shaping and creating an economy that delivers for people and planet versus fixing market failures. so if you ever took economics classes, which i think you did right, you did ppe. so the e part of your ppe, you would have learned that the way that economists think about the role of policy and the state is at best... at worst, get out of the way, at best, it's about fixing market failures. so what i've been talking about now for about ten years is that we need to replace that with shaping and creating markets that create a particular type of growth — inclusive, sustainable, smart, innovation—led growth. missions are how to redesign policies like industrial strategy, like procurement

policy, which is government as purchasing, in an outcomes oriented way. so by missions, in other words, you mean a big long—term goal. you don't mean next week, next year, in two years�* time we'll cut the nhs waiting list. you mean something much biggerfor a country? i mean, first of all, a mission in terms of how i talk about and how i talk to politicians globally in terms of changing how they do policy. first of all, it has to exactly be a goal. you need to actually be able to say yes or no. did you achieve it? you know, the moon mission, getting to the moon and back. it wasn'tjust getting to the moon and back in a short amount of time was a mission. but second, it has to involve as many different sectors and actors in an economy, because for me this is actually about stimulating economic growth with a direction. so to get to the moon and back in a short amount of time, nasa had to work with so many different sectors. it wasn't just aerospace, it was nutrition, materials, electronics, software.

in many ways, the software industry as we know it today was an outcome of lots of the different problems they had to solve along the way. by doing that, so a next point is to get all these different sectors together, you actually need to change how you do policy to stimulate bottom—up innovation. so if it was all top down, if it had been nasa's telling everyone what to do, they would have never gotten to the moon. the direction was bold, ambitious. it required lots of different sectors, but especially bottom up innovation, of which much failed. so all the things we know that succeeded along the way, camera phones, foil blankets, baby formula, software, these were solutions to problems that had to be solved. so even i mean, this is interesting, even if they hadn't gotten to the moon, had they blown up just before getting to the moon, it would have still actually been successful in terms of what i call dynamic spill—overs, all the spill—overs that happen along the way of which some

fail, some succeed. that's what gets you growth. so growth itself is not a mission. growth is the result if you're able to catalyse due to the excitement, the ambition, but the design of policy, lots of innovation across the economy. why the moon landing? why did that capture your imagination? you were born just after... yeah. ..the fulfillment of president kennedy's great dream. was it those speeches, that sense that he captured a vision for the country, and at the time, obviously, you didn't know how it would be delivered. just had a sense that it should be delivered. exactly. so that's actually the tension. how do you provide a clear kind of direction of travel without saying, you know, what the solutions are because that would be top—down, that would kill innovation. so the reason i got super interested in the moon mission was also the language, as you just said, the speeches. why were they interesting? because they're the exact opposite of the speeches we hear today. if you hear kennedy's speeches, it was about, we're doing it because it's hard, not because it's easy. it will cost a lot of money, but it's going to be worth it because it's going to be

an economy—wide project and we need to embrace uncertainty. i want to talk about the italian roots of these ideas, butjust before we do that, give people then a bit of a sense of what a mission might be. if it isn't "let's make the nhs work better," which is in fact effectively one of keir starmer�*s five missions, what does fit the bill of a mission? well, first of all, i definitely don't see my role or anyone�*s role in academia or even in the business community going off to tell governments what their mission should be, but examples of missions, so for me, it's about the framing and why it's so different from the current framing that we use to design different types of policies, which end up just handing out money to different sectors without any request of what should happen. so whether it's a mission about reducing the digital divide to zero, so in the next lockdown, if there ever is one, every child on the planet continues to access their human right to education. whether it's having a net—zero city, region or country. both of those two types of missions, for example, would require lots of different sectors. a climate—related mission is notjust about renewable

energy, just like the moon mission was notjust about aerospace. let me explore this thinking some more, but let's first of all do where it comes from. the moon, you mentioned. your father, and you were born in italy, was a scientist. is a scientist. this is quite a politicalfamily. it's quite a progressive family. influenced by what your family had seen happen in italy over decades? yeah, i mean, so i would say my family has, well, gave myself and my two siblings a critical eye. like i remember we actually used to sit down and watch the news together. and were trained in some ways, or heard our parents kind of doubt what was being said on the television screen in terms of, you know, you should go out there and kind of conduct your own research and find as many different opinions in italy with all the problems italy has. one good thing it has always had is that at the newspaper stand, we still have our newspaper

stands, you could buy any newspaper from the extreme left to the extreme right and everything in between. and that kind of diversity and heterogeneity of ideas politically has always been quite a feature of the italian political system. whereas in the us, for example, new york times, boston globe, chicago tribune and then locally very little actually. now, i'm told you sang the protest song, bella ciao. bella ciao, yeah. i mean, you know... for those who don't know the song, what's the significance of that? well, it's a song that was very important for the italian partisans, the antifascist movement. my husband, by the way, comes from a family from the alta langa part of italy, between genoa and turin, where the partisans�* stronghold was. and his grandfather's family was all killed, actually, by the germans during the occupation of northern piedmont. the antifascist sentiment in my family, obviously, is not only strong, but very worried today, given what we're seeing, including in italy, you know,

fascism actually coming back. britain today has its own versions, i think, of this kind of extreme right thinking. in some places, it's more explicit than in others but i think globally what we've seen is the extreme right coming back, also, partly, i think due to the extreme suffering that we have on the ground, and when we don't have clear trajectories of how to solve problems that people are facing, sometimes very easy answers like, blame the immigrants... i mean, we faced this here with brexit, didn't we? that's why, in a sense, your thinking matters, particularly at a time when labour are trying to be re—elected here. somehow, people have to be convinced that government, that the state has at least part of the answers. yeah. and you have this phrase that you use about the entrepreneurial state. what does that mean? well, the entrepreneurial state, the reason i use that term was actually to debunk this idea that creativity,

value, wealth creation, entrepreneurship isjust in the private sector, and at best the public sector can redistribute value, can enable, can de—risk, can facilitate, can fix problems. you go further than that. you take silicon valley, you take the iphone, many of the ventures that we attribute to brilliant individuals, to the stevejobs of this world or the elon musk and others, and you say, no, no, no, government, not created those items, but at least created the foundations of those. absolutely. in what way? well, the iphone or any smartphone, what makes it smart and not stupid? no one says, let me get my stupid phone. they say smartphone. what makes the phone smart is the technology that's in it. so internet, gps, touch screen, siri, all four of those technologies actually came out of public investments. the internet was a solution to a problem, which was to get the satellites to communicate. gps was a solution to a problem for the navy to know where the ships were.

so the real question for missions are, what are the big problems that can actually then fuel innovation, which solves those problems? and in the case of the iphone, my point was not the government invented the iphone, that would be stupid. the point is where will the future iphones and those kinds of big innovations happen if government is stopping, which i fear is happening globally, stopping to actually really fund and think big alongside the private sector about the kind of public investments we need to foster solutions to big problems around energy, health, digital and so on. yeah, in a moment, let's explore that. but before we do, where does it take you, though, with silicon valley? you're not saying we're going to nationalise the development of apple? no. so are you saying that the state, the entrepreneurial state, could have a stake in those companies? i mean, arguably, israel does that — a highly successful tech sector. it comes out of its military. many of the people who don't want to serve on the front line

are in fact, developing things like waze, for example, the technology that conquers the world. what are you arguing the state should do? so there was two points of the entrepreneurial state. one was the history, just to kind of unveil what i would call the true history behind silicon valley, but also in israel. israel would not be a so—called start—up nation without usma, which was its public venture capital fund. and so whether it's in health, there was a chapter around health in the entrepreneurial state, which i wrote ten years ago, which looked at all the new molecular entities with priority rating, these are like the big drugs that actually have solved big problems. 75% of the funding that led to those radical innovations came from public entities. so part of it was just kind of a historical inventory of what actually happened. but the second bit was addressing exactly your point, which is, so what does that mean? if we socialise the risks, because that's what i tell through those stories, how do we make sure that we don't then just privatise the rewards? how do we socialise both risk and rewards? not necessarily through

nationalisation and equity sta kes. sometimes that might make sense in some cases. but what i actually talk about are the different conditions that should be in place. so the public, which doesn't mean just the public sector, the state, but people benefit. so in the case of drugs, medicines, how do we make sure the prices of the medicines reflect that public contribution? so it's not necessarily about ownership or investment. no, no, no, it's about governance. how do we govern innovation so that people and planet benefit, especially in the cases where that innovation itself actually came, at least partly if not massively, from public investment? again, in the case of drugs, we should make sure that the intellectual property rights, for example, are not as wide as they are, just used for strategic reasons, not as strong as they are, hard to licence, not as upstream as they are, which means that the tools for research actually get privatised, which is not the point of patents. it should be much more downstream. but let's take a very specific example. tesla, which, you know,

the famous tesla s car, which was the first version of the tesla car, that would never have happened without a massive guaranteed loan that came from the us government, the department of energy to elon musk. well, let's turn to what it might mean here if there is a change of government this year to keir starmer. keir starmer has five missions. what do you make of them? so first of all, i've found it wonderful, if you want, that the labour party has been using my ideas from back in the day when i wrote the entrepreneurial state. i was talking to people like chuka umunna back in the days when he was still a functioning member... the former shadow business secretary. but also others and so on. and so today this kind of latest thinking about missions has been picked up. and what i've said to them is just be careful, because, so for example, the first mission, which is securing the highest sustained growth in the g7, that's fine as an ambition, as sort of an outcome of what you would like to see by implementing good policy, but that's not a policy.

like, i mean, what country wouldn't want to have high growth? it's kind of obvious. what do you do in order to foster not just growth, but good growth, sustainable and inclusive growth? and that's where the missions come in. so, for example, a clean growth mission that requires the nutrition sector, the energy sector, the construction sector to change how they're currently operating, could foster growth. now, you were clear all the way through this interview that it's notjust the language of missions, it's notjust that mindset, but it's also a willingness of governments to invest and not to see spending as a bad word. yeah, long—term investments. given that, do you think keir starmer and rachel reeves are believing what you've said, or are they running shy of what the electorate might think is spending and taxing and borrowing? so what i think is incredibly important for labour to do, but i would argue also for the democrats in the upcoming us election and really any party that sees itself as a progressive party,

i prefer the concept of progressive, moving forwards in a good direction, instead of just the left—right distinction, is changing that narrative. this is not about saying, ok, we're going to be fiscally responsible, so we're going to keep the deficit low. oh, but then we're also going to do a bit of good things here and there. oh, but there's no money to do that because we want to keep the deficit low. it's about completely changing that mindset, which is, if you're really going to go after a mission that requires private sector investment, don't forget, again, private sector investment in this country in britain remains very low, and public sector investment, that can actually, if designed well — that's where the missions come in — fuel economic growth, which is the denominator of what? of debt to gdp. so when you hear the great debate about, should labour hold its nerve and stick by the plan to borrow £28 billion to invest in a green prosperity plan, how do you feel? the danger is that then you become even less convincing on the economics front.

it sounds like you're saying, yes, the tories made all sorts of mistakes. we're going to solve those problems, we're going to spend on green. oh, but not a lot of money on it. so it kind of feels like you're neither here, neither there. and so if people aren't convinced that what they're hearing is a true different economic narrative and also one that is exciting, that's ambitious, that's bold, that you can kind of get behind again, like getting to the moon and back, but around our earthly problems, then the danger is, of course, that... it depends when the election is, but if the tories just start handing out a lot of money to those that are hurting and you don't hear on the other side a true different economic narrative, the election could go either way. i personally really believe in, you know, the labour party's change in thinking and the way that they're talking about the need for not only public sector investment but new types of partnerships, about putting work and the working people at the centre of a plan. but that really has to be backed up by serious policies that put their money where their mouth is, but especially that

change that narrative. you're not an official adviser to the labour party, but you do talk to them quite a lot and to different people, you've met them. do you think they'll make the difference, the people running the labour party now. well, if they come to office they must, because i don't think this country can afford this static inertia which is causing so much damage. dominic cummings, when he was advising borisjohnson, was highly critical of the civil service and the kind of thinking of it. he famously said he wanted geeks and misfits to join. i sense that even though your politics are very different, you might have some sympathy for that. well, he invited me into downing street when he was saying that. so he brought me in and said, i've read all your stuff, it's great, and again, we were interested in the entrepreneurial state. and i said to him, but you have to be careful. you're part of the problem. by saying you want to bring geeks into government, you're already kind of dismissing the civil service and the way that obama, for example, brought in steve chu, who was a nobel prize winning physicist to run the department of energy,

he was the minister for energy under obama was not saying, we want geeks in government. come on, geeks, come in. he said, we're going to have an 800 billion stimulus programme and use it to green our entire economy. and steve chu said, wow, i'll come. had he been asked, oh, come in and just de—risk elon musk or help us set up at best a carbon tax, i'm sure steve chu would have said, i can do that perfectly fine advising you from stanford. so how do you make it really ambitious, an honour, exciting to work inside the civil service? you have to change how you think about the civil service, instead of constantly attacking it, dismissing it. i began the entrepreneurial state with a quote from david cameron, who said, civil servants are the enemies of enterprise. well, if that's how you talk, what's going to happen? you're going to have a haemorrhaging of talent from the civil service. so what would they have to do to get mariana mazzucato into government instead of flying around the world advising governments? well, first of all, i don't just fly around the world, i spent a lot of time setting up a whole department, notjust an institute,

a department at university college, london, on this concept of public purpose and public sector capacity. sure, but is there a bit of you that sometimes sits with people are taking these decisions, thinking, hey, in the right environment, why wouldn't i be the person taking that? wouldn't i be at centre of government? sure, i mean, i've been asked to join government. i can't say more than that. but for example, also in italy, i was asked to be a minister and i was not interested. what i'm very interested in doing is changing, for example, the mindset, the education. you know, we have to remember people aren'tjust born bureaucrats, they're educated. they go and take, you know, they graduate from programmes, mpps, masters in public policy and mpa, masters in public administration. if you look at the curriculum behind those mmasters programmes, they're part of the problem. if at best, again, at worst, get out of the way, at best, you're going to fix a market failure — that is embedded in the training and the curriculum... i'm hearing that but i'm not hearing about you. in other words, what is it...?

i'm trying to change the world. ..that holds you back... i'm changing the mindset of government. but is what holds you back in the end... in a funny way, it's too small, you can advise lots of different people in lots of different places if you stay as an academic. or is there a sense that you wouldn't work inside government? it's kind of not you? well, what i like doing is being able to work outside being able to be very frank and open and critical, because even though sometimes my work has been misunderstood as glorifying government, i think i'm the biggest thorn in the side of governments, by actually looking atjust how rubbish a lot of the policies are because they are so reactive, because they are at best facilitating, fixing, enabling, instead of really helping to again create, create value in a different way instead ofjust redistributing that value in a problematic way. i wonder if you'd work well in this... you were once described as the world's scariest economist. is that flattery or an insult? well, it was very funny, actually, because it was a times article and the journalist, who was a woman,

the article was fantastic, and then the male colleagues wrote the title and she tweeted, she tweeted against the title, which, we laughed because in fact, i mean, ijoked about it by saying, "yeah, we should be scared when we have such a problematic way of thinking about the economy." but it is quite funny that when you're a woman and you're progressive and governments might be listening to you and you're bold enough to actually get into the media instead ofjust talking silently, you can be... ah, but i think there's more to it than that. i heard you describe yourself as like cruella de vil. you once said that you loved wild water swimming... no, that's because i... ..and you dipped in the water as cruella de vil, and you emerged as mary poppins. so is there a bit of you that... no. ..self—critically thinks... absolutely. ..i'm quite tough? i mean, that was morejust reflecting on how exhausted you can be at the end of the day. and if you go home to my home, which is, i have four kids, which i had in five years, so, you know, in a short amount

of time produced, reproduced, and you can get home quite exhausted at the end of the day. and dipping into the pool before coming home is a good way to let off steam before you start bossing everyone around. final question. there are plenty of people looking forward to this year, or rather, not looking forward to this year. deep anxiety about the state of the world. do you remain an optimist in the face of what you see? i do, because ultimately all my work from the books but also to the practice on the ground is always about the economy as an outcome of decisions we're making. there's nothing inevitable, there's nothing deterministic, whether it's about climate change or even the geopolitical crisis — these are outcomes of what we have decided to do in our public institutions or private institutions or third sector institutions. how do you set up an ecosystem that's truly driven by, as we were talking about before, solving the biggest challenges of our time? of course we can do it,

and when we don't do it, we have decided not to do it. there's no forces out there that are preventing us. mariana mazzucato, thank you forjoining me on political thinking. thank you very much. there aren't that many people, given labour's huge poll lead, who are willing to say that they fear keir starmer won't be our next prime minister, and those that do tend to be his critics on the right, of course, or even on the corbynite left. what matters about mariana mazzucato�*s criticism — she's an advisor to the labour party, it's her thinking that helps underlie keir starmer�*s talk of five missions to transform britain. what the next few months will show is whether she's listened to. thanks for watching.

hello, there. it was a cold and locally foggy start for many this morning. temperatures fell in parts of aberdeenshire as low as minus eight degrees, but there was a widespread frost for many, the exception down towards the south—west. i'll come on to that injust a moment. but we had some glorious sunshine. despite that chilly start, a lovely morning across frinton—on—sea in essex. by contrast, into the south—west, more cloud, stronger winds and some rain arriving with this area of low pressure. just fringing with parts of south wales, as well. as we go through the morning and into the afternoon, that rain is going to continue to slowly drift its way eastwards, maybe bringing more cloud into the london area during the afternoon, but it should stay dry. further north of that, sunny spells will continue and any showers will be very isolated indeed, perhaps most frequent to the far north—west of scotland, with highs of six to ten degrees. that rain will continue to move its way across channel coasts overnight. the heaviest of the rain

south of the m4 corridor. it will take its time to ease away from the kent coast by dawn on monday morning. that cloud and rain will prevent temperatures from falling too far, so a frost—free start for much of england and wales. we'll have clearer skies further north and west, so here a light frost is likely. but the difference with monday, once that rain has cleared away from the extreme south—east, is the wind direction — a brisk north—easterly, particularly across central and southern england. we could see gusts of winds up to 30mph to 40mph in places and that will make it feel noticeably fresher. a lot of dry weather and, again, some sunshine coming through, with highs of seven to ten degrees. as we move out of monday into tuesday we're going to see some wet and windy weather pushing in to scotland. that will drift its way across scotland, northern ireland into northern england and wales by the end of the afternoon. ahead of it we are likely to see quite a lot of cloud developing, as well. by tuesday, brighter with a few scattered showers out to the far north—west.

that front will clear slowly but surely as we move out of tuesday. it will not bring that much in the way of rain to the south—east and this brief ridge of high pressure will build before more fronts wait in the wings. it is going to be a changeable week ahead, really. at times we will have some brighter weather, followed by rain and then the brighter weather returns. live from london. this is bbc news. senior conservatives are drawn into an argument over islamophobia — after a tory party mp is suspended

for comments about london's mayor. i don't believe that lee anderson said those remarks intending to be islamophobic. donald trump moves closer to the republican presidential nomination with a big primary win in south carolina. it's his fourth consecutive victory. and oppenheimer is the big winner at the screen actors guild awards— it nets the top prize of best cast, as well as best actor for cillian murphy. hello. i'm lauren taylor. deputy prime minister oliver dowden has refused to be drawn on whether comments by the former conservative mp, lee anderson, were islamophobic. mr anderson was suspended from the party on saturday because he refused to apologise for saying "islamists" had "got control" of mayor of london sadiq khan. our political correspondent georgia roberts explained the situation the conservatives were facing following mr anderson's comments.