Back to the Future? UK Industrial Policy after the Great Financial Crisis?

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (2008), debates began to shift
towards perspectives on the ‘rebalancing’ of mature economies with a particular emphasis on promoting more sustainable productive activities. In the UK, this led to an initial acceptance – among some policy makers - that the state could in a positive way, utilise ‘industrial policy’ to revitalize manufacturing. However, while some of the early industrial policy initiatives - such as the Automotive Council and the Catapults - have been promising, the Coalition and then
Conservative government’s stance on industrial policy has been at best ‘muddled’ and at worst, is often ‘empty rhetoric’. In this chapter, we explore and evaluate the role of UK industrial policy since the GFC, paying particular emphasis upon initiatives at technological, regional and sectoral levels. We conclude with some suggestions for the future course of UK industrial policy, in the post-Brexit era, given the government’s recent green paper.