Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T16:49:46.448Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Industrial strategy for post-Covid Britain: a renewed public purpose for the state and business

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2023

Suzanne J. Konzelmann
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Jan Toporowski
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access

Summary

There is no doubt that the UK economy will take a big hit from the Covid-19 pandemic. Estimates of its actual impact vary, but, at the time of writing, most commentators put the figure at between 11 and 14.5 per cent. To put that into perspective, following the 2007–09 financial crisis, between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009 the UK economy shrank by a little over 6 per cent, and it then took five years to regain its pre-crisis size. The sheer scale of the Covid-19 impact means that the state's support for the recovery will need to include an industrial strategy – something that Britain has not seen in over 40 years.

The nature and effectiveness of that strategy will largely depend upon the relationships between government and the various industrial sectors; much will also hinge on the question “What are companies actually for?”. From Margaret Thatcher's election in May 1979 until very recently, the answer was a very definite “Making profits and delivering value to shareholders”. But fallout from recent events, reminiscent of the interwar years, proves that it is just not that simple.

Beyond profit: the question of corporate purpose

Part of the United Kingdom's response to the 2007–09 financial crisis was to bail out financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. The fear was that, had they not been rescued, the resulting damage would be more than purely economic. The social dislocation resulting from account holders having no access to funds, losing their savings or being unable to pay their mortgages – plus the consequences of increased unemployment caused by the “Great Recession” that followed – would have been enormous.

The bailouts were therefore a de facto admission that businesses are indeed about more than profit. If that message needed any more reinforcement, it came in the form of admissions, by every government since 2008, that the economy needed rebalancing, with a new emphasis on manufacturing. We have yet to see any action, though. As it stands, the government's proposed post-pandemic recovery programme offers a lot of infrastructure investment; but, inexplicably, both industrial strategy and a business bank remain absent.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Return of the State
Restructuring Britain for the Common Good
, pp. 125 - 136
Publisher: Agenda Publishing
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×