A Less-than-half-cock Strategy

Mrs May was talking in January about the importance of the 'Industrial Strategy' on which her government was supposedly working very hard. It has now been unveiled, and although there is some straight thinking in it there is also grave incomprehension of economic realities. Just to list a few:

*Brexit: it is vitally important that any drugs, designs or other innovations are marketable throughout the European Union on more-or-less the same terms as at present: otherwise, firms that are subsidised to employ teams of researchers in the UK will do the final stages of development within the Union so that the product is not inhibited by regulatory barriers from getting to its primary market. Innovative products will be held up at any border by licensing and regulatory systems, to allow indigenous companies in the potential importer countries to catch up. WTO Rules will not stop such chauvinistic chicanery. Even before the advent of Trump, the USA was notorious in that regard: while firms in emergent economies - including China and India - are not above simple intellectual theft.

*Profits can be shoved abroad by alien companies. So the British state will be sponsoring and helping alien-owned firms to develop products - employing some British scientists and technicians, true - but also allowed to import their own managers and experts for the duration of the period of product development. The manufacturing of the developed idea can that be conducted anywhere on the globe, and the pricing structure can be adjusted so that British taxpayer gets little back for the investment by the British state. Although some share of the intellectual property in some ideas may go to British universities and individuals, the vast majority will be owned by alien organisations; and can thus be alienated as they wish.

*Fake apprenticeships such as are being developed with schools and universities in the UK are most unlikely to produce people with the skill-set that is achieved by real apprenticeship in Germany. It is therefore unlikely that the programme will develop a strong and longstanding skilled workforce such as exists in the dreams of the contributors to the strategic plan. The ongoing delay in the actual launch of the Apprenticeship-MBA will provide no obstacle to the companies that have already agreed to participate in the Industrial Strategy.

*Any genuine development of science and technology in the UK is greatly to be welcomed. But I have observed personally for more than forty years that a huge proportion of the research that is carried out in the best British universities of technology - places like Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield - is done by alien research students. Not enough Brits are capable of getting good degrees in science and technology, because of the awful state and status of science in schools. Side-tracking kids into fake apprenticeships where they simulate industrial processes instead of doing full-time hard learning will set the UK back in its development of the right skills for the twenty-first century.

My overwhelming feeling about the strategy is: "too little, too late"!

Most importantly, the 'strategists' still have not got lesson number one: that productivity improves only when productiveness gets the prime place. Productiveness is improved only when the profit from any activity is devoted to improving the plant, the processes, the materials used and the people employed. When that is done, productivity can improve and real economic growth [in the sense of generating more income-per-head from the workforce]  can be achieved. I do not see that productiveness will significantly be enhanced by this new Strategy.