Kemi Badenoch is deliberately gaslighting the nation. The trade secretary is again using The Daily Express to mislead and misinform, I assume this is because no reputable newspaper would parrot the rubbish she comes up with. I know many think we are well down the path of post-truth politics and reading the nonsense Badenoch - a senior cabinet minister and possible future party leader remember- seems to be responsible for, you have to agree. She is quoted by the Express:
“We're using our freedoms to back brilliant British industry. If Labour get in, we risk losing the benefits. We must stay the course. And if we do, Britain will remain a manufacturing juggernaut now and for decades to come.”
I think this must have been in response to being sent a draft of an article by Giles Sheldrick who is apparently the Chief Reporter for the Express, hardly a job you would want to boast about, using several stories cobbled together to give a wholly laughable picture of UK manufacturing.
Here it is:
Sheldrick claims:
“Brexit freedoms are powering a manufacturing ‘juggernaut’ that is firing a resurgent economy, Cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch says. The pulsating 'made in the UK' sector is now worth £518billion and supporting 7.3million jobs in a clear sign the country is on the up and thriving."
I can only assume Sheldrick is either part of a conspiracy painting a glowing but entirely fictional account of what’s happening in Britain’s post-Brexit industrial landscape or he's totally incompetent, possibly both.
The former UKIP MEP David Campbell-Bannerman tweeted a link:
This is huge news. A new study now estimates booming UK manufacturing - with 1 in 4 UK manufacturers repatriating jobs to the UK post-Brexit - is not just the 8% ‘direct contribution’ to our economy but is now at nearly 25% GDP. https://t.co/OB2OhWOdV3
— David C Bannerman (@DCBMEP) April 15, 2024
Sheldrick uses a report by Oxford Economics/MTA to give his story a veneer of respectability if not truth. MTA is the Manufacturing Technologies Association, a trade body representing the engineering-based manufacturing sector and which organises an exhibition focused on manufacturing technologies known as MACH. Their report is titled: The true impact of UK manufacturing. I confess I've never heard of them and suspect you haven't either.
The report makes no mention of Brexit at all in any of its 56 pages. It does say that "the UK manufacturing sector supported a total of 7.3 million jobs in 2022, equivalent to 22.4% of the UK total. This includes direct and indirect jobs."
And later: "...the manufacturing sector’s share of total exports has declined over the years; in 2000 manufacturing exports accounted for 55.6% of all goods and service exports. Over this time period, services exports have grown faster than manufacturing exports with service exports making up 50.7% of all exports in 2022, compared to 33.9% in 2000."
From a chart on page 12 you can see manufacturing exports accounted for about 35% in 2022. In other words, the sector is shrinking fast and not growing at all. This is also confirmed in a similar report with exactly the same title published in 2018 by the same two bodies, which claims the sector supported 7.4 million jobs then, so apparently losing 100,000 jobs in 4 years.
It hardly sounds like Britain's industrial base is ‘firing a resurgent economy’ or ‘powering a manufacturing juggernaut.’ Where he and Badenoch got that idea isn't clear. Neither of them seems to have bothered to read the report which is simply a rehash of old statistics on how small our manufacturing base actually is.
It is certainly not "huge news" and the sector hasn't seen any sort of wirtschaftwunder (economic miracle) as Campbell Bannerman would have you believe. It is just continuing the slow decline that we have seen elsewhere, with our exit from the single market almost certainly helping to speed the downward slide..
Brexit doesn't get a mention I suspect because as far as I know, virtually every trade association in the entire sector including chemicals, automotive, food, small businesses, etc think Brexit has made both importing and exporting more difficult, more costly, and slower as well as adding considerably to the difficulties in recruiting skilled people.
How did MTA's report come about? You may well ask. The motivation can perhaps be seen in their MACH exhibition which began yesterday in Birmingham. How convenient that was, eh? A bit of publicity never hurt anyone, did it? It would be fascinating to walk around the exhibition and see just how many British-owned companies have taken a stand. My guess is not a lot.
It comes as the unemployment rate increased today and Liz Truss endorsed Donald Trump who will be sitting in a New York courtroom for the next few weeks facing trial on criminal charges.
What a world we live in.
