The Guardian view on Britain’s industrial strategy: where is it?

theguardian.com:

I n 2011, George Osborne used his second budget speech to promise a “Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers”. The UK manufacturing sector, cut off at the knees during the accelerated deindustrialisation of the 1980s, was to rise up and make a triumphant comeback. Britain was going to make stuff again.

It didn’t happen of course. By 2016, Mr Osborne’s ideological commitment to a smaller state and austerity had contributed to a steel crisis, falling orders in construction, and a crisis of confidence in the private sector. In the absence of a proactive government setting strategic goals, and using its spending power to direct investment towards them, the march of the makers shuddered to a halt amid a needlessly prolonged recession. Brexit, by decoupling Britain from the mass market on its doorstep, then introduced a whole new world of pain for manufacturers.

Six chancellors later, Britain still lacks a proper industrial strategy and the country’s manufacturing base remains underpowered and undersized. Last week, an exasperated report from Make UK – which represents 20,000 manufacturers across the country – pleaded for a coherent plan, before the sector is left behind in an era shaped by the green transition and new technologies. Speaking at the launch of the report, the former Bank of England chief economist Andrew Haldane described a new “arms race” as countries vied to establish themselves in the industries of the future. The UK, said Mr Haldane, “was not really in the race at any kind of scale”.

A step-change is required in Whitehall. But a government that remains wedded to laissez-faire assumptions appears unwilling to recognise that the economic zeitgeist has shifted. Supply-chain crises during the pandemic, a