Today’s Financial Times reports on the TUC’s call for  a new strategic investment fund, with a budget of £5bn, to invest in key industrial sectors. This is one of a number of recommendations set out in our new policy paper, ‘Developing UK industrial policy: lessons from France’.

Five years ago, many would have rejected the idea that we could learn much from across the Channel. But after an economic downturn in which the French have suffered markedly less than the UK, the TUC felt it was prudent to understand why this was the case, and to see if there were lessons to be learned . Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Globalisation, Manufacturing | No Comments »

There are a number of issues at stake with the takeover of Cadbury’s by Kraft. Inevitably free market fundamentalists have accused doubters of being protectionists and little Britishers but the case against this takeover goes much wider than a defence of the iconic nature of the Creme Egg. But unions are right to fight back.

The biggest issue is that this is going to be largely funded by debt. This will mean that Kraft will have to extract significant value out of the business to pay interest and the loan capital. It is a perfectly reasonable public policy objective to discourage highly-leveraged bids of this type.

What makes this worse – as Nick Clegg very effectively pointed out at yesterday’s Prime Ministers’ Questions – is that some of the loan finance is coming from the  publically-owned RBS. It is indeed strange that RBS is funding something that the government has opposed. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Manufacturing, Multinationals | 3 Comments »

Buried in the companies section of the Financial Times today (possibly because it contradicts the news story which I have already blogged about), is a report of an interview with the head of Corus UK, Kirby Adams. Although probably not the most popular manufacturing boss in Britain because of his decision to mothball steel plants on Teesside (see Community’s campaign pages), he indicates that there is all to play for in developing a progressive, interventionist consensus on manufacturing strategy, rather than maintain the generation-long assumption that the market knows best. Read more »

   Filed under: Manufacturing | Comments Off

The Financial Times says Lord Mandelson’s manufacturing strategy is failing to convince manufacturing employers. But they use journalistic sleight of hand to make the evidence fit the story better, suggesting that the FT editorial line of support for tax cutting Tories rather than Labour investors has bled into the news pages.  Read more »

   Filed under: Manufacturing, Recession, They Just Don't Get It | 2 Comments »

The Times is in bullish mode this morning. It’s editorial, ‘Creative industry‘, starts controversially: “Few phrases strike more fear into British business than ‘industrial policy’”, it opines. Really? I was heartened to read how Lord Browne, former boss of BP and for so long one of the UK’s top industrialists, praised the interventionism of Tony Benn, of all people, earlier this year. “If the Government had not got involved, a lot of vital infrastructure would have been produced outside of Britain”, Browne reminded us.

Nevertheless, The Times editorial gets over its poor start with a thought provoking piece about the way in which the UK might pay its way in the global economy of the future. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Manufacturing | Comments Off

Industrialists have some reason to cheer after today’s publication of the Pre-Budget Report.

The PBR contained an additional £200m for the Strategic Investment Fund, the body set up in this year’s Budget to support the ‘New Industry, New Jobs’ initiative. Read more »

   Filed under: Investment, Manufacturing, Pre-Budget Report | Comments Off

Ed Miliband’s clutch of four national Energy Policy Statements, announced today, mark another key stage in our low carbon energy strategy. It’ll  help deliver up to 500,000 green energy jobs by 2020 set out in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy last July. This includes opportunities in the UK and from growing markets across Europe and globally.

Those calling for a smaller State and Budget cutbacks might heed this comment from the independent Committee on Climate Change in October 2009:

There is an approach to power generation that says emissions from the sector are capped and that we can entirely rely on the market to determine the appropriate path to decarbonisation. This is not, however, an approach that the Committee accepts. Whilst inclusion of the power sector in the EU ETS will deliver the emissions cuts required in the sector to 2020, it will not automatically bring forward the low-carbon investment to deliver required emissions cuts in the 2020s and beyond.

Read more »

   Filed under: Environment, Manufacturing | Comments Off

Today’s news of an extra £100 million for the Government’s vehicle scrappage scheme will bring the total budget to £400 million, covering up to 400,000 vehicles. This new stimulus is vital. Today’s GDP growth figures show the economy is still extremely fragile. As TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said today, “Any halt in economic stimulus – or even worse, cuts in spending in a premature effort to close the deficit – could easily send us into another downwards spiral.”

There’s a double dividend here – the scrappage scheme has boosted UK car production and put us on track to meet the EU target for vehicle CO2 emissions of 130g/km of CO2 by 2012. That’s the verdict of Clean Green Cars, which found that average new car CO2 fell by 5.5% in the first nine months of 2009. For nerds, this is from an average of 159.31g/km in September 2008 to 150.56g/km in September 2009. Read more »

   Filed under: Environment, Manufacturing | Comments Off

Peter Mandelson’s speech (YouTube) is undoubtedly the talk of Labour conference here in Brighton. It was of course an extraordinary performance but that should not obscure its policy content. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, G20, Manufacturing, Politics | Comments Off

In his latest post, Adam makes some very worthwhile observations about the damage of spending cuts to the economy. And in spite of positioning himself as perhaps the most enthusiastic exponent of cuts among today’s crop of politicians, they don’t seem to be doing George Osborne’s fortunes much good either.

Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Manufacturing, Politics | Comments Off