Theresa May is seeking to distract us from Trump, Brexit and the NHS today with a new industrial strategy (NIS). According to the FT this NIS will:
The first handful of industries to benefit will be: life sciences: ultra-low emission vehicles ; industrial digitisation; the nuclear industry; and the creative industries. A new industrial strategy challenge fund will be used to finance research and development, including in smart energy, robotics, artificial intelligence and 5G mobile network technology.
Three thoughts. The first is how bizarre some of these are. The future of vehicles is electric, and that requires battery technology, which is not there.
Second, the biggest energy issue is cutting usage and there is nothing in here focussed on that. Where is the building insulation and double glazing that is still needed to make the UK's buildings energy efficient?
Third, where are the jobs for most people? Digitisation and robotics; AI and 5G are all about eliminating work. Nuclear employs a relative handful of people. Outside Cambridge so too do life sciences.
There would appear to be a glaringly obvious flaw in Theresa May's plan. It's called a lack of people who might create the demand for whatever it is she wishes to invest in. This is already one of the crises of modern capitalism: it is unable to think of things that people want or can afford. It is not creating demand because people aren't really that bothered about more stuff. What they want are three things. They are affordable homes, secure jobs and a future for their children.
The UK needs a new industrial strategy, but it's a Green New Deal that we need and not more remote tech that alienates people ever more from the world they live in, the companies that create what they consume and any chance of meaningful work.
Business already has all the finance it needs to deliver the technologies May is talking about: this plan just gives them money they don't need to let them invest in things we may not want. Astonishingly her plan does not mention infrastructure: the real UK need. As a result the economic transformation our economy requires will be ignored, yet again, and the destruction of meaningful work will continue apace.
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A bit of detail: EVs – mostly personal transport “battery technology, which is not there” just about – & we are talking months – not years in tersm of price/performance points to drive market penetration (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM&t=183s)
Energy efficiency: building rennovation is labour intensive, material cost is peanuts. A focus on this would/should provide fairly paid, long term jobs & a green new deal to fund it i.e. gov funding. Delivering this would also require local gov involvement – sadly, power has been drained from local gov over the last 35 years.
I agree that most of the tech is already there – with one or two exceptions (e.g. how to power trucks – CNG now, SNG & maybe H2 in the future).
Thanks Mike
And as the battery technology is almost here, perhaps some public investment in a serious level of charging infrastructure across the country might be in order?
If you own a detached/semi-detached house with a drive in which to park, it wouldn’t be too difficult to install charging devices for your putative electric car. If you’re living in flats/maisonettes or terraced houses, however, how are you going to be able to charge your electric car in any sensible manner in the nearish future? Even fast chargers will take some time to do their work.
It’s the one elephant in the room which isn’t really considered as we move towards electric transportation.
Good point….
I think that you’ve highlighted some real concerns here.
The NIS seems detached from reality to me. Also, slightly delusional.
May – a modern day Nero in leather trousers?
I think so.
But also underpinning this of course is the serious stuff she hasn’t said and that you have alluded to already.
That we are going to becoming a tax haven perhaps?
That the NHS will be privatised and opened up to private sector – particularly the American private sector who – having bled their own middle class nearly dry – need more victims (sorry – ‘markets’) to expand into?
That the infrastructure will continue to decline.
I also think that part of the Tories rationale is as follows:
That the harsh social security conditions will continue putting people off having children (because what they daren’t say is that the Government doesn’t want you create more people for which they can’t be arsed to provide jobs for). So they are nudging you instead. They want a country with fewer people to look after – fewer of us who are made up of those who have the means to look after ourselves and not need their help (the well off, property/asset owning class).
And of course with a small tax base there is no need or means to have an apparatus of State is there?
We must face up to the fact the these Tories are some of the most hard line ideological right wingers EVER and that they are in the process of reforming the country for a small elite. They do not govern for everyone at all.
And they must be stopped.
Have you seen the article in the Torygraph? The one about Mays visit to Trumpton. It talks about them developing a a ‘job creation scheme’ also free movement of workers between UK and USA. It’s either a ploy to wind up the EU so we get what we want or Trump dumps all his low skilled workers on us. He nicks all our high skilled Tecs and Doctors. Win Win for them. We get a low skill economy to fill our low paid jobs, creates divisions so she maintains the status quo. He gets skills the can use for their plans. Bargain Bucket Britain. The Brexiters will be livid! Or maybe they won’t?
The core Brexiters won’t care: they were just about shifting power their way
This does that
“Where is the building insulation…?”
We have a cavity wall insulation programme, and it has damaged 1.5 million homes. So it’s important to retain a healthy scepticism about such programmes.
Where do you get this nonsense from?
It’s not nonsense. See, for example:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4143922/1-5million-homes-blighted-damp-cowboy-builders.html
The same story has appeared in The Times
Oh come on
Cowboy building issues cannot be confused with the need for proper insulation
If you want to post here make sensible contributions or don’t bother
All I’m saying is that such schemes require proper regulation. Grant schemes attract cowboys like wasps to jam.
But that is not what you said
I have heard similar comments (about poorly executed insulation). One of the points I made in my first comment was the need for local gov’ involvements. In fairness in a later post you noted “such (insulation)schemes require proper regulation” – who better to do that than properly funded local gov? The existence of “cowboy” insulation companies is the fault of government – in the same way that the 2008 crash was the absence of meaningful regulation with respect to the finance sector. The most important element of insulating a house is the survey – to determine what can & cannot be done. This should be a local gov function & there is an argument to be made that local gov could group houses together and once the best approach to insulation is identified – work with the householders to put it to tender – thus saving the householders money. Extending: why not fund the whole thing through a Green Deal.
Good point Mike
Accepted
As a youngster I lived in a town which had sock factories. If socks could be made that lasted a great deal longer or did not wear out at all, most people would be better off. But in a sock making town a lot of firms and jobs would go. If the new socks were made elsewhere then they might all go. Also if others made cheaper socks it would impact seriously. They don’t make socks there any more and a once rich town is now poor.
Nor does the Great Central pass through either
One of the best and most modern railway routes – and we scrapped it – most of it.
OK – the stations were sometimes a bit out of town but that was nothing a proper transport strategy could address.
Instead, we went for car ownership – now look at us (cough, cough).
Indeed
And to continental loading gauge too
Job creation in Nuclear Industry: oh dear.
In amongst all the retirement parties and farewell drinks that I accompanied my father to – back in the days when he was active in GEC’s ’25 Club’ of long-serving employees and retirees – I am certain that I attended the retirement of Britain’s last Nuclear Engineer.
If you apply to the National Nuclear College in Bridgewater – built specifically to serve the Hinckley Point ‘C’ project – and you are seeking a career that does not involve pushing a mop, the essential qualification is good business French.
The skills, the heavy engineering, the management and the money are all from overseas.
I will leave it to others to explain that that biotech in Cambridge, like any academic enterprise of any size, is an international effort: and Mrs May’s abominable behaviour towards visitors and students and workers from beyond these islands is the toll of doom for any hope that this *international* success in Britain will continue to flourish and grow.
That leaves programmers, a conspicuous success of Britain’s skill economy: we’re in demand everywhere in Europe, and every single one of us is looking there for better work. And maybe never coming back: Mrs May isn’t making Britain an attractive workplace for the highly-skilled and highly-mobile workforce that she claims to want.
Some have gone already: the only robotics engineer I know – a Cow Cyberneticist, no less, and you don’t meet many of them – invited a crowd of us to her farewell drinks at the Bree Louise last year: she’d come back from her job in the Netherlands to sell up everything in the UK and emigrate to New Zealand. Half the Cambridge ‘Thursday Pizza’ geeks were there, and the recurring topic in their conversations was networking and cultivating opportunities in Europe and beyond.
So I don’t see much in Mrs May’s Industrial Strategy: nothing at the strategic level, and everything to the contrary at a personal level among people that I actually know.
For ‘industrial strategy’, read ‘corporate welfare’.
Blue collar and white collar Brexiteers will be disappointed as will their Trump brethren. However ‘remainers’ are dreaming that maintaining the status quo has not been / is not also job destroying. We have to shift the fundamentals of the political economy of our societies to a focus upon whole life experiences not simply the social pathology that is money wealth. Brexiteer elites like Remainer elites continue to find ways to subsidise profit and the narrow interest groups it feeds.
Well said
Agreed on the need for infrastructure but of a particular kind – CIVIC.
A civic infrastructure is needed to help local people connect share and trade for common purpose – a shared business model, process and operating system is what’s needed and what’s coming.
One that matches the community’s under-used resources (e.g. unemployed people, empty shops, unsold tickets on buses) with the community’s unmet needs (meaningful work, somewhere to start up a business and cheaper public transport).
Demand will come from a civic infrastructure that serves the needs of its people. Those needs will be served by the supply side producing the goods services and experiences that are demanded by consumers.
Sounds a bit mad doesn’t it? Well, don’t be a cynic. It’s on it’s way and it’s coming from Manchester the home of better business!
Good things come out of Manchester
I am well aware of it
Among other things it’s the home of the Fair Tax Mark
Fair Tax Mark – who was behind it? Was it Coops UK or one or the trade unions?
Me originally
Then Ethical Consumer joined
And co-ops got the ball rolling
It sounds to me as if May(hem) is preparing for something similar to what was portrayed in the film Zardoz, a world which supports a handful in luxury and simply discards the rest of us.