Labour has promised us an industrial strategy. The King's speech this year said the government would "establish an Industrial Strategy Council" and the objective was to "pursue sustainable growth by encouraging investment in industry, skills and new technologies." Let's hope they will be more successful than all the previous industrial strategies that British governments have pledged in the past. I don't hold out much hope since there has been an Industrial Strategy Council since October 2018 with former Siemens UK boss Jurgen Maier at the helm.
Maier has now been appointed to run Great British Energy, so he won't be doing much industrial strategising for a while.
You probably won't be at all surprised to learn that the ISC was established by Theresa May as a result of a 2017 white paper: Industrial Strategy, Building a Britain fit for the future. Did anyone notice any tangible results? No? I thought not. The white paper was a waste of 256 pages. Starmer doesn't even seem to know we already had an ISC.
In another seven or eight years, a new prime minister will probably be listening to a new King's speech containing more meaningless platitudes about an industrial strategy.
This is not to suggest that industrial strategies don't work. I think they can and we should be developing one but it doesn't help for them to be short-term, constantly changing and without serious funding. A real strategy would be cross-party and backed by serious money. We certainly aren't going to see that for a while, if ever.
The recent Olympics and Paralympics in Paris are a good example of public money being spent on a public good. Before John Major established the Lottery and money started to be regularly distributed via UK Sport, we had a dismal record winning just one gold medal and 36 in total in Atlanta in 1996. Since then we haven't embarrassed ourselves and usually end up in a respectable place.
Long-term funding worked for sport and it can work for industry, provided politicians can work together.
The EU is ahead of us in this. The commission have recognised the need to improve European competitiveness and Mario Draghi, former head of the ECB and former Italian prime minister has produced a report launched a few days ago:
Dear Mario Draghi, a year ago, I asked you to prepare a report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness.No one was better placed than you to take up this challenge.Now, we are eager to listen to your views ↓— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) September 9, 2024
It seems to have been well received and I assume with the EU Commission behind it, it could have an impact over the next decades. The concern is that Europe lags behind the USA in productivity and the strategy is to try and close the gap. Bear in mind that we are even worse than the EU
However, in this country, we need more than an industrial strategy with serious funding to encourage more investment. We also need a change in attitude. I urge you to read this article by Robert Peston: What does Grenfell tell us about the British malaise? We could also talk about the Post Office scandal, the state of public utilities, the infected blood scandal, and a host of other problems which reveal a deep seated issue about out whole attitude to work and wealth creation.
A strategy, yes. Money, yes. But without a big change in attitude they alone will not be enough.
