MPs round on government over industrial policy ‘lack of direction’

Boris Johnson won the Brexit war but he’s in danger of losing the peace as sloganeering wins out over strategy, writes James Moore

The economy at work. But does the government have a Plan for Growth worthy of that title? (AFP/Getty)

Boris Johnson won the Brexit war but he and his government seem bent upon losing the peace. Perhaps it’s the Churchill fanboy’s attempt to emulate his hero, who did the same thing after securing victory in a far nobler endeavour.

The “opportunities” presented by Brexit were never terribly well defined but the government’s preference for placing sloganeering above strategy surely won’t help to capitalise on them, assuming they exist.

The latest evidence of its failings on that front comes courtesy of the cross party Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Committee, which this morning goes public with a fairly damning report.

The committee lambasts the government for what it says is the failure to “set out its approach to industrial policy following the recent scrapping of the Industrial Strategy, leaving many businesses unclear about the future of the UK economy”.

It criticises the decision to bin the independent Industry Strategy Council, which had been chaired by Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, calling it a “retrograde step”.

And it worries about gaps between government and business “at a time when delivering productivity improvements, economic growth and decarbonisation is urgent”.

It should be said, when it comes to said gaps, that business has been trying hard to mend fences with ministers. Tony Danker, director general of the CBI, sought to put the divisions over Brexit between business and government in the past with a report “Seize the Moment” a while back.

Danker went so far as to tell the BBC that “we find ourselves in total alignment about what needs to be done” as regards the future.

“We need to level up, we need a greener economy and, my God, we should not waste this opportunity,” he declared.

As far as olive branches go, that’s a fairly full one. You could make a case full of high quality extra virgin oil to put on a fancy salad with it.

And I understand that, in general, relations have improved considerably.

But the report nonetheless suggests there are reasons to doubt the government’s ability to capitalise on this and to meaningfully deliver on the economic promises it has made.

Yes the outlook has been altered by Covid-19 but, as the report identifies, “the long-term challenges the 2017 strategy sought to address are as relevant today as they were four years ago”. These include the skills gap, an ageing workforce, a persistent problem of poor productivity, and more besides.

The previous strategy may have suffered through being “complicated, remote and removed from the day to day concerns of business” when it came to addressing them. But it did have least have a mission and some objectives.

Its replacement, the “Plan for Growth”, ought to present an opportunity to learn from past mistakes. However, Darren Jones, the committee’s chair, fears that it is instead “nothing more than a list of existing policy commitments, many of which are hopelessly delayed”.

And it’s not at all certain who’s responsible for overseeing delivery of the Plan.

Jones is actually being quite nice in talking about “policy commitments” given the way that some of them are more slogans in search of policy. Levelling up anyone?

Favouring slogans over strategy is a theme with the current administration which, where it has had successes such as the vaccination programme, has rather given the impression that it has backed into them by mistake.

A body like the one chaired by Haldane could have helped a great deal in putting some meat on brittle bones. The economy will suffer as a result of the failure to do that, and so will those improved relations.

The end result will likely be more of the tedious culture war dross Johnson and co like to serve up to divert attention from their lack of ideas. How long can they dine out on those is anyone’s guess. They seem to think it’s forever. I wouldn’t be so sure.

It’s certainly a pretty shabby way to treat Brexit voters, some of whom were genuinely persuaded by the arguments that the country really could do better outside of the EU with the right government. But it wouldn’t be the first time that had been pointed out.