Manufacturing needs ‘more pragmatic industrial strategy’

The Labour Party has been urged not to wipe the slate clean on industrial strategy if it comes to power.

Lee Hopley, former chief economist at manufacturing industry group EFF—now called Make UK, told delegates at the Labour Party Conference on 23 September that the last four iterations of Britain’s industrial strategy have been increasingly ambitious.

But this increased ambition has “come with a trade-off in terms of reduced coherence and real challenges around deliverability”, said Hopley, who is now an independent economist.