Head in the sand

UK Research and Innovation’s delivery plan seems oblivious of economic and political reality, says David Walker.

UK Research and Innovation’s birth turned out to be relatively painless. The fiercely autonomous research councils succumbed, giant egos have been held in check and back-channel chats between chair John Kingman and his former colleagues in the Treasury have kept the funding—or at least the promises of funding—flowing.

But the vision laid out in the delivery plans for UKRI and the research councils published on 10 June is curiously monocular. The mandarins of research policy seem to be living in a parallel universe in which austerity, Brexit, political and social dislocation and public contempt for evidence and expertise never happened. They are all ignored here.