Theme: Political Economy | Content Type: Journal article

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Industrial Policies or Industrial Strategy: The Difficulty of Enacting Long-Term Supply-Side Reform in the UK

Steve Coulter

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Remy Gieling

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Abstract

The government's recent ditching of Theresa May's interventionist ‘Industrial Strategy’ and its replacement with the more amorphous and target-driven ‘Plan for Growth’ has dismayed many in industry. But in many ways, the move merely exemplifies the ad hoc, short-termist and ideologically driven nature of how industrial strategy has often been conceived and implemented in the UK since its rediscovery as an important tool of supply-side policy following the market-fundamentalist Thatcherite interregnum. This short-termism has sabotaged repeated attempts to move the UK economy onto a higher and more sustainable growth path and will likely hinder the government in meeting its objectives on productivity, decarbonisation and levelling up through reindustrialisation. The problem has both institutional and ideological causes, largely to do with Treasury domination of the supply-side agenda and its default market failure approach. This hinders successful adoption of the kinds of expansive, ‘mission-oriented’ industrial strategies followed more successfully in other countries and which could be transformative if applied in the UK.

  • Steve Coulter

    Steve Coulter

    Steve Coulter was Head of Industrial Strategy and Skills at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE. He is now Head of Economy at Green Alliance.

    Articles by Steve Coulter
Volume 96, Issue 3

Latest Journal Issue

Volume 96, Issue 3

This issue features a collection titled 'The Intellectual and Political Legacy of David Marquand', who died in April 2024, edited by Colin Crouch, Ben Jackson and Peter Sloman. In this collection, authors including Jean Seaton, Will Hutton and Hilary Wainwright consider Marquand's legacy as a great progressive thinker, his biography of Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister, and the role of socialism for Marquand. Other articles include a commentary by Deborah Mabbett titled 'Welfare reform by numbers'; Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams on 'The Vices of Values: Matthew Goodwin and the Politics of Motivation'; Helen McCarthy on 'Why the WASPI has no Sting: Gender, Generation and Pension Inequalities'; and Sam Taylor Hill, Tariq Modood and John Denham on 'Multicultural Nationalism: Saving the White Working Class from Blue Labour?' A selection of book reviews feature Edmund Fawcett's review of 'Nationalism: A World History' by Eric Storm and Samuel Cohn's review of 'Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid' by Sheilagh Ogilvie.

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