📢After a brief hiatus the UK appears to have an industrial strategy again! This is very welcome news!
🇬🇧The publication of the Green Paper is an important first step to securing long-term green growth for the UK: https://gov.uk/government/consultations/invest-2035-the-uks-modern-industrial-strategy
👇A few thoughts on its content below
🇬🇧The publication of the Green Paper is an important first step to securing long-term green growth for the UK: https://gov.uk/government/consultations/invest-2035-the-uks-modern-industrial-strategy
👇A few thoughts on its content below
Comments
Industrial strategy is *not* the entirety of a growth strategy, if you want something to solve every problem in the economy you're in the wrong place. This is one intervention among many needed for growth
IS is not about state planning or subsidy races or picking winners - its about a strategic state as an active participant in the economy, with embedded institutional capacity, working to prioritise and coordinate
Industrial policies shift economic activity, industrial strategy does that in line with a wider objective or goal in mind
The green paper has 4 objectives that @ippr.bsky.social has backed:
📈economic growth
🍃net zero
🗺️regional growth
🌐economic security
A big tension within an IS will be the balance between protecting the jobs & specialisms that exist today and the need to foster future strengths - IMO the latter should be the priority of an IS but the former as an important part - both are here:
One of the main things I want to see from an IS is not an economywide plan but strategic prioritisation, it has to say what the UK thinks itll be good at in the future
Like them or not, this strategy has priority sectors and data for why those:
Sounds like they mean digital platforms - like airbnb/uber and the social media - twitter/FB and maybe Google.
Is that what they mean, or is it just ‘woody words’?
Much ink has been spilt over this but the green paper comes down on the right side: you dont have to pick, the UK is good at both, we need both in the future
In a welcome move, this shifts the debate away from manufacturing- or AI-fetishism