From Maggie to May: Forty Years of (De)industrial Strategy

Abstract

Upon becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May installed industrial strategy as one of the principal planks of her economic policy. May's embrace of industrial strategy, with its tacit acceptance of a positive role for the state in steering and coordinating economic activity, initially appears to be a decisive break with an era dating back to Margaret Thatcher, in which government intervention was regarded as heresy. Whilst there are doubtless novel features, this article argues that continuity is the overriding theme of May's industrial strategy. First, despite the reluctance to confess it, like every UK government over the past forty years, May is proposing to intervene selectively to ‘pick winners’. Moreover, the strategy envisages extending assistance to industries which have been in receipt of substantial government resources since the 1970s. Likewise, the backing anticipated for industries identified in May's strategy is dwarfed by that given to those which are not, most notably the financial services sector. Far from radically rebalancing the structure of the UK economy, May's strategy seems destined to entrench the deindustrialisation with which its governments have grappled for almost a century.

The distinctiveness of state capitalism in Britain: Market-making, industrial policy and economic space

“…Yet, it would be incorrect to say that conventional industrial policies were entirely absent, even as neoliberalism was ostensibly embraced by elites after 1979 (Woodward and Silverwood, 2022). Instead, as we have sought to show in this section, these conventional industrial policies were increasingly directed to secure competitive advantages for financial capital (Silverwood and Woodward, 2018). Moreover, Britain increasingly pursued aggressive trade policies via the World Trade Organisation, including the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPs), which benefited the international operations of key manufacturing industries like pharmaceuticals (Chang and Andreoni, 2020).…”

The substitutive state? Neoliberal state interventionism across industrial, housing and private pensions policy in the UK

“…Industrial policy is not a discrete area of policy, but rather any intervention focused on modifying a given economy's industrial structures (usually, but not exclusively, by 'upgrading' manufacturing processes) (Chang, 2014;Rodrik, 2009). Notwithstanding debates about whether long-standing public policy support for the development of the finance sector should be seen as a form of industrial policy intervention, it is clear that industrial policy, in a conventional sense, has a rather limited lineage in the UK (Silverwood and Woodward, 2018). However, this heritage was challenged, to some extent, after 2008, as the UK's poor productivity performance began to concern policy-makers, and the financial crisis -and later the Brexit vote -drew attention to regional and sectoral 'imbalances' in the UK economy (Berry and Hay, 2016).…”

What we do in the shadows: dual industrial policy during the Thatcher governments, 1979–1990

“…Consequently, the resurrection of industrial policy since 2008, specifically the willingness to engage in vertical or selective industrial policies that channel resources towards chosen economic sectors, has been widely interpreted as a novel development in UK economic policymaking, albeit one that is an element of statecraft concocted to camouflage the continuity of neoliberal ideas and the interests and institutions that nourish them (Berry, 2019; Lavery, 2019). This article is sympathetic to this view; however, it argues that selective industrial policy has throughout been an indispensable, if neglected, aspect of the United Kingdom’s neoliberal model (Silverwood and Woodward, 2018). By putting neoliberal ideas in the spotlight, successive governments have cast the persistent role of industrial intervention into the shadows.…”