Louise Casey

Louise Casey arrived on the scene as an uncompromising bruiser - “I’m the solution, you’re the problem.” There was a notorious early incident when she calculated that the best way to make an impression on assembled police officers was to get drunk and swear at them.

She’s come a long way since then. Her current radio 4 series, Fixing Britain, is just brilliant. She focuses on a range of tricky problems, and in half an hour presents intelligent, specific ways in which these can be tackled. It’s not all about her; she’s assembled an impressive network of experts who really know what they’re talking about, and if you get sceptical there is the track record - with covid imminent, huge numbers of homeless people were suddenly taken off the streets and into safety. And who ran that operation? Louise Casey.

But this isn’t just her banging her own drum. It’s also a very specific analysis of how government can help, and where it can go wrong. She prodcues plenty of examples of both, and over the five episodes she extracts general lessons for government - what works, and what doesn’t. This is a brilliant series, because at this low point in our governance it actually offers tangible, realistic hope.