The Britishvolt’s failure is a surprising success for healthy business

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The noise from Ed Miliband’s desk does not suggest that future Brits will have any trouble getting our money. Under Labor’s Green New Deal, they’ll just need to strike louder.

This would take us back to the full episode, of course. Over four decades, UK industrial policy has shifted from state co-ordination of key sectors, to laissez-faire policy, and back again. The laissez-faire approach of the 1980s obliged private capital to step up and take on the task of choosing the winners, rather than the taxpayers.

Gradually, the American-style investment model took hold here, so that more innovations from our great universities could be commercialized. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage was taken care of: we no longer indulged the interests of domestic producers. But it only took one economic crash for the old memories to stir up.

By 2008, in the turmoil of the financial meltdown, Gordon Brown’s Industry Minister was boasting that he had “reclaimed industrial strategy from the stacks of the 1960s and 1970s,” as “industrial activist” Peter Mandelson told us.

Then Vince Cable and the coalition government enthusiastically embraced politics. Overtures were launched, and politics began to resemble a Bonfire Night fireworks display accidentally lit before spectators arrived. The government has even appointed an ambassador for an Old Street landmark, in the hope that the magic of Silicon Valley will be found in East London.

By 2017, we had a vast new word salad to digest, in the form of yet another new industry strategy. This was full of “sector deals” – including the construction industry and food and drink – “major challenges”, and a promise to increase investment in research and development to 2.4 percent of GDP. No one is left out, the sign of a country that can’t decide who it wants to be: the United States, Singapore, or protectionist France.

Today, there is a broad consensus around the idea that government can make a significant difference by funding research projects, and STEM education. But even this is not so simple.

With China now seen as a rival in the war, interventions increased. In 2021, Forgemasters is taken over by the Ministry of Defense, pledging £40m to ensure British steel gets to Britain’s nuclear submarines. In belatedly, ministers ordered a reverse sale of Newport Wafer Fab, the factory that makes miracle electronic components that transmit energy and light, composite semiconductors.

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