The Guardian view on Britain’s industrial strategy: where is it? | Editorial

Without one, the country risks missing out on the opportunities offered by the green transition and new technologies

In 2011, George Osborne used his second budget speech to promise a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers". The UK manufacturing sector, cut off at the knees during the accelerated deindustrialisation of the 1980s, was to rise up and make a triumphant comeback. Britain was going to make stuff again.

It didn't happen of course. By 2016, Mr Osborne's ideological commitment to a smaller state and austerity had contributed to a steel crisis, falling orders in construction, and a crisis of confidence in the private sector. In the absence of a proactive government setting strategic goals, and using its spending power to direct investment towards them, the march of the makers shuddered to a halt amid a needlessly prolonged recession. Brexit, by decoupling Britain from the mass market on its doorstep, then introduced a whole new world of pain for manufacturers.