Why is a Conservative government publishing an industrial strategy? This afternoon, Business Secretary Greg Clark tried to insist to MPs that the white paper he was presenting wasn’t a return to the mistakes of previous governments in picking winners and constraining businesses, but a means of ensuring that Britain was able to compete with other countries to solve some of the great challenges of our time. ‘This isn’t about protecting the past, it’s about taking control of our future as a nation,’ he argued in his statement, telling the Commons that the government had struck four sector deals in life sciences, construction, artificial intelligence and the automotive industry. He repeatedly used the language of the ‘global race’ that so obsessed the Cameron government, while avoiding the phrase itself. Britain couldn’t be left behind, he argued, and it needed to be ready to compete properly.
Theresa May promised this strategy when she became Prime Minister, and her former adviser Nick Timothy had bemoaned the previous government’s failure to produce what he saw as a real industrial strategy.
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